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.