On the Grasshopper and Cricket

Sonnet

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.