On the Grasshopper and Cricket

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 runFrom hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the leadIn summer luxury,—he has never doneWith 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 frostHas wrought a silence, from the stove there shrillsThe Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost,The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.