536. On the Grasshopper and Cricket

John Keats (1795—1821)

  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.