present
time.

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, etc.

In this charming composition you will have noticed the word "stove"; but
you must remember that this is not a stove as we understand the term now,
and signifies only an old-fashioned fireplace of brick or tile. In Keats's
day there were no iron stoves. Another word which I want to notice is the
word "poetry" in the first line. By the poetry of nature the poet means
the voices of nature--the musical sounds made by its idle life in woods
and fields. So the word "poetry" here has especially the meaning of song,
and corresponds very closely to the Japanese word which signifies either
poem or song, but perhaps more especially the latter. The general meaning
of the sonnet is that at no time, either in winter or in summer, is nature
silent. When the birds do not sing, the grasshoppers make music for us;
and when the cold has killed or banished all other life, then the house
cricket begins with its thin sweet song to make us think of the dead
voices of the summer.

There is not much else of note about the grasshopper and the cricket in
the works of the great English poets. But perhaps you do not know that
Tennyson in his youth took up the subject and made a long poem upon the
grasshopper, but suppressed it after the edition of 1842. He did not think
it good enough to rank with his other work. But a few months ago the poems
which Tennyson suppressed in the final edition of his works have been
published and carefully edited by an eminent scholar, and among these
poems we find "The Grasshopper." I will quote some of this poem, because
it is beautiful, and because the fact of its suppression will serve to
show you how very exact and careful Tennyson was to preserve only the very
best things that he wrote.

Voice of the summer wind,
Joy of the summer plain,
Life of the summer hours,
Carol clearly, bound along,
No Tithon thou as poets feign
(Shame fall 'em, they are deaf and blind),
But an insect lithe and strong
Bowing the seeded summer flowers.
Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel,
Vaulting on thine airy feet
Clap thy shielded sides and carol,
Carol clearly, chirrups sweet.
Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete;
Armed cap-a-pie,
Full fair to see;
Unknowing fear,
Undreading loss,
A gallant cavalier,
_Sans peur et sans reproche_.
In sunligh