Poetry Friday: On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

Every year in August, I'm struck by "the poetry of the earth." The cicadas are pleasantly deafening on an August night in Nebraska. Atticus mentioned last night that when he was a child, their song meant there was a month of summer left, but these days (oh, why must school start so early?) it means he's back to work.

For me, the cicada song also means, "Since Atticus is back to work, I've lost my chef and I have to start planning dinners again."

O, cicada!

O, late summer!

O, Atticus! We miss you. (And not just your cooking.)

On the Grasshopper and Cricket*
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’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.


~~~~~

Heidi Mordhorst has the Poetry Friday round up.


*In the public domain.