On the Grasshopper and Cricket by John Keats

[Julie]

On the Grasshopper and Cricket by 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 - 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

Happy is England! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own

To feel no other breezes than are blown

Through its tall woods with high romances blent

Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan

To sit upon an Alp as on a throne

And half forget what world or wordling meant

Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters

Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging

Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing

And float with them about the summer waters

Poem from The Oxford Library of English Poetry ~ Volume II ~ Sackville to Keats