ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET

: Lessons From Nature
: Types Of Children's Literature

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.



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