The speaker has slept through dawn and now addresses the creatures who were noisy around it: a wren, a cricket, katydids. The tone is half teasing, half tender. The speaker asks the wren when the cricket will quit "its racket" in its throat, as if the bird has swallowed the insect's sound. Then the cricket is pitied for spending the whole night as second fiddle to the katydids. The katydids' chatter becomes gossip about "poor Kate," who, the speaker says, did "both less & more" than anyone knows. That is a playful nod to the katydid's call, which sounds like a name.
The ending turns softer and more serious. The speaker tells them all to be still and become a leaf, a sail, a rudder, quiet things that guide or drift. "Sleep furiously / for every hour / without love" suggests a longing beneath the humor. Sleep seems to be offered as comfort, even escape. The mood is wry, drowsy and a little wistful.