On the Grasshopper and Cricket
On the Grasshopper and Cricket - context Summary
Sonnet from 1816 Challenge
Written in 1816 for a sonnet-writing competition with Leigh Hunt and published in Poems (1817), Keats’s sonnet celebrates nature’s unending music. It pairs a summer grasshopper and a winter cricket to argue that the “poetry of earth” persists through seasons. The poem demonstrates Keats’s early skill with the sonnet form and his engagement with contemporary literary circles while presenting a simple, comforting claim about continuity and joy in nature.
Read Complete AnalysesThe 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.
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