The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/On the Grasshopper and Cricket
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET
Written December 30, 1816, on a challenge from Leigh Hunt, who printed both his and Keats's sonnets in his paper, The Examiner. Keats included the sonnet in his 1817 volume. Leigh Hunt's sonnet will be found in the Notes and Illustrations.
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.