Pholidoptera

Last night, as I again failed to see an otter, I heard a dark bush-cricket from a straggle of bramble. This is the sound which nature sends to tell us summer is done, though this year it never came.

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone,” they sang. “Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.”

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everyone that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into fall – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

E. B. White

Charlotte's Web

The great wind had mauled the trees, combed the grasses and made the woods a multitudinous sea for two days. The year had turned, so early and after such a mockery of summer. Today there had been a touch of north in the wind, who was veering with the sun, and tomorrow we might have fine. But the prime was gone.

T. H. White

The Goshawk