Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Poetry of Earth

28. On the Grasshopper and the CricketThe 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

December 30, 1816

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