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.