The Poetry Of Earth / On The Grasshopper And The Cricket :- John Keats

The Poetry Of Earth / On The Grasshopper And The Cricket

John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821) was a noted poet of the English Romantic Movement.  He belonged to the second generation of Romantic poets who came after Coleridge and Wordsworth.  He is known for his vivid imagery which are noted for their sensuous appeal.  Some of his famous works are Ode to a Nightingale, Hyperion and Isabella.  The argument put forward by Keats in this poem is that, the natural music of the earth never ceases to play through the cycle of seasons.  The poem is a sonnet in which the song of the grasshopper is embodied in the octave and that of the cricket is portrayed in the sestet.

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.

 Summary of The Poetry Of Earth / On The Grasshopper And The Cricket

The poem presents the song of the grasshopper and the cricket as the natural music of the two different seasons of summer and winter . In summer , when the earth is drowsy with heat , the grasshopper among the hedges celebrates a song of the overflowing endowments of nature . The buzzing activity of summer comes to a stop in the frost of winter . There is little sign of life . Then the stillness of a winter evening is broken by a cricket's song . To one who is alerted by the cricket's song , the music comes as a reminder of the grasshopper's song in summer . The point that Keats is trying to make is that the cycle of nature is never empty of its innate music . In this way , " the poetry of the earth " continues from one season to another . Hence , the poem highlights the eternal quality of nature's cyclical pattern and assures us of the permanency of nature's creation .