The Poetry of earth is never dead

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,—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 among some grassy hills.

Grasshoppers Existed Long Before Dinosaurs

Famed fable writer Aesop portrayed the grasshopper as a ne'er do well who fiddled away his summer days without a thought to the future but in the real world, the destruction wreaked by grasshoppers on farming and ranching is far from a harmless parable. Although grasshoppers are extremely common, there's more to these summertime critters than meets the eye.