The Grasshopper and the Cricket

Listen to:

The Grasshopper and the Cricket (:50)

by John Keats

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

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.