536. On the Grasshopper and Cricket. John Keats. 1909-14. English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald. The Harvard Classics

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

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	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 some grassy hills.