‘On the Grasshopper and Cricket’ is a fourteen line poem or a sonnet in which the poet expresses his view that the nature is always inspiring a poet to compose poetry through its various aspects. For Keats, seasons may change, but nature would never cease to inspire the poets and sing its songs.
During the extreme heat of the hot summer, when the birds stop singing, the earth continues to sing. The birds hide under the shade of the trees and fall silent. A voice runs from hedge, to hedge, taking the lead in the extreme weather and sings delightfully. That is the voice of the grasshopper. He sings endlessly, but when tired it rests under some pleasant weed.
During extreme winter, too, the birds stop singing. There is a death like silence in which the nature seems to have got enveloped. Frost spreads its blanket over all elements of the nature. Despite that, a shrill sound comes from under the stones, it’s the cricket who is singing. Cricket’s song restores the warmth that had got lost. People hear the song and to many it seems as if the grasshopper was singing from the grassy hills.