On the Grasshopper and Cricket, a Poem by John Keats

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

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.

* This poem is found in the public domain.
“On the Grasshopper and Cricket” was published in Keats’s book of Poems (C. & J. Ollier, 1817).