Sunday, June 9, 2019

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.

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