How can we infer that the Grasshopper enjoys performing its duties in summer? Who steps in its shoes to carry on the poetry of earth? What effect does the latter create on a human being?
In ‘The Poetry of Earth’ Keats unfolds the never-ending poetry of nature. In the octave, the poet draws a picture of the summer season where the birds, being exhausted, takes rest under the cool shade of the trees. It is only the grasshopper who cheerfully moves from hedge to hedge and continues its song of summer. Nothing can dampen his spirit and when he gets tired, he rests beneath, ‘some pleasant weed’. His enjoyment in summer is distinctly expressed in the octave of the poem.
The cricket steps into the grasshopper’s shoes to carry on the poetry of earth.
In winter, when the world lies motionless under the thick layers of snow and frost, the cricket’s song is heard which breaks the silence of winter and carries on the poetry of earth. A human being, who is ‘half lost in drowsiness mistakes the cricket’s song to be the grasshopper’s and enjoys it.
What concept do you get about Keats’ notion of beauty as revealed in the sonnet ‘The Poetry of Earth’
‘Beauty’ is one of the most striking features of Keats’ poetry. For him ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ but here he goes beyond mere appreciation of beauty. Like an apostle, he declares in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ that ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’. In The Poetry of Earth’, the beauty of nature manifests itself through mortal creatures, yet it is eternal. The song of nature continues through summer, merges into winter and the grasshopper takes the place of the birds only to be succeeded by the cricket. This song has a soul of its own and expresses itself even through the tiny insects. Here Keats’ perception of beauty is typically sensuous and reflected in natural images like, ‘hot sun’, ‘cooling trees’, ‘new-mown mead’, ‘pleasant weed’, ‘lone winter evening’, the Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills’ and so on. By using rather unconventional imageries, Keats has portrayed the beauty of summer and winter and also delineated the latent beauty of the endless poetry of earth recited by the grasshopper and the cricket.