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 (1795 - 1821) English Romantic Poet.  The Poetical Works of John Keats edited with an Introduction and Textual Notes by H. Buxton Forman, C.B. , 1908 Reprinted...1940.