On the Grasshopper and Cricket

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

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
     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
     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 some grassy hills.

John Keats