On the Grasshopper and Cricket
By John Keats
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the grasshopper’s—he takes the lead 5
In summer luxury—he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost 10
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper’s among the grassy hills.
1. What keeps the poetry of earth alive in the heat of summer? In the cold of winter? What does Keats mean by his first line?