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 Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. On the Grasshopper and Cricket by John Keats |