Keats’ use of sensory description is highlighting his engagement with and admiration for nature. Not only does ”earth” itself emanate “poetry” – a word resonant of beauty and grace – Keats implies that it does so through its effect on us and the sensory description accentuates this. Starting with his description of the sensory through temperature, we are both presented with “hot sun” and “cooling trees. Tellingly, nature provides both, something which indicates Keats’ view of its complementary balance and brilliance. The sound, or anthropomorphic “voice”, of the grasshopper is adding aural texture to this, and the fact that it is given this human quality arguably lends it the same status as us; this small insect, a virtually microscopic element of nature, is elevated. As part of the same flowing description, we are then offered the smell of “new-mown mead.” Nature, then, is presented as both complex – as it is multifaceted and multi-textured at once and presented as superior to the achievement of man through its immortality – and simple – as seen through the easy flow of the enjambment running through this passage and the focus on the ordinary experience.
His reference to ‘The poetry of the earth is never dead’ shows clearly the never-ending cycle of creativity the fact that he uses the word poetry reiterates nature’s effortless achievements as poetry is something he himself spent his life perfecting. He goes on to praise almost every aspect, the trees are ‘cooling’ the ‘luxury of summer’, as if everything is at its best. Even the weeds become pleasant.
In ‘On the Grasshopper and the Cricket’, Keats mentions ‘some pleasant weed’ under which the grasshopper is resting. The oxymoronic phrase vividly expresses his admiration – describing the weed which most would see as a nuisance as ‘pleasant’. It’s saying that even the most mundane and common expressions of nature such as the weed are beautiful in their own way. Furthermore, this point is extended by the fact that it is ‘some’ ‘pleasant weed’. It could be any weed, any plant and Keats would still admire it. The calm and restful nature of the line is brought out by ‘weed’ ending that section of rhyme, heightening its pleasantness, making it sound like somewhere I’d want to ‘rest as ease’.
Keats vividly expresses nature in the first half of the poem by using all the sense to show off how he feels about the place around him. He infers the smell of the ‘new-mown mead’ and the ‘voice’ of the grasshopper. Also you feel the ‘hot sun’ and ‘cooling trees’. This depth of sensory description conveys admiration for nature because the description is expansive and rounded. The fact that you see, hear, smell and feel nature implies the natural world consumes all else, because it comes at you in every way that you sense things.
Keats expresses an admiration for the cricket in the latter part of the poem, demonstrating how the cricket can seem to bring back the warm weather through its song which is ‘in warmth increasing ever’. Before the return of the cricket, words with negative connotations are used, such as ‘wrought’ and ‘shrills’, this enhances the relief that the summer and ‘song’ of the cricket bring. The grasshopper, in contrast with the cricket, is a feature of the summer, when the ‘hot sun’ means that even ‘the birds are faint’. The grasshopper, however, carries on as normal, ‘[his] voice will run’ when everything else is still. Keats expresses an admiration for nature in that the grasshopper can continue to ‘sing’ when all else is silenced by heat, as can the cricket ‘when the frost/ Has wrought a silence’.
Keats uses the description ‘from hedge-to-hedge about the new-mown mead’ to pick up on the grasshopper’s work. This compliments the phrase ‘he has never done.’ These two phrases show that the grasshopper is always moving – always wishing to give his song. Keats admires the energy and willingness of the grasshopper. The use of ‘has’ never done is interesting because it sounds different making it catching. It is slightly contrasting with the rest of the poem because it goes against cycles by bring in the past tense. But ‘never done’ returns to the cycle of continuation shown throughout the poem.
Keats uses the descriptions of the scenery to show that the changing of the seasons and the differences that they have are universal. ‘From hedge to hedge’ implies that the grasshopper’s song reaches all through the meadow, as does the cricket’s song ‘when the frost/ Has wrought a silence’. In both times of year, the music of the insects reaches to the very extremities of what they know – the grasshopper in his ‘new-mown mead’ and the cricket on the ‘lone winter evening’, both seasons describe the songs as the focus when all else is silent.
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