On the Grasshopper and Cricket / John Keats

 
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)
from Poems, 1817

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Keats biography

"On the Grasshopper and Cricket", from Keats: The Musical, sung by Natalie Oak. Courtesy YouTube.

See also: "To the Grasshopper and the Cricket," by Leigh Hunt