"On The Grasshopper and The Cricket" Analysis

Background

Keats was born in England in 1795 and died of tuberculosis when he was just 25, by

which time he had composed an astonishing amount of powerful poetry. This

particular sonnet was written when he was 21. It is in the Petrarchan or Italian form

of the sonnet with an octave (here quite clearly divided into two quatrains) and a

sestet, without a rhyming couplet at the end. Like Milton, who also used this form, he

wrote sonnets about many different subjects, not specifically, as early sonnet writers

tended to, about love.

The poem was written as a response to a sort of competition between himself and his

great friend, Leigh Hunt, as to who could write the best verse, in a short time, on a

specified topic. Keats won on this occasion, although he generously avowed that he

preferred the other poet’s attempt.

Students' attention might be drawn to parallels with (e.g.) Aesop’s fable ‘The Ant and

the Grasshopper’ in which the grasshopper lightheartedly plays during the Summer,

while the Ant toils. When Winter comes, the grasshopper, unlike the Ant is illprepared

for its severity. (Cf. also Poems 40 and 41 in Songs of Ourselves: Isaac

Watts, ‘The Ant or Emmet’ and Abraham Cowley, ‘The Grasshopper’.)

Title: the grasshopper is a diurnal insect, the cricket nocturnal. They both like

warmth, hence the reference to the stove as a home for the cricket.

Line 8: weed: the poetic use of this word denotes a small plant and is quite neutral,

with no implications of not being wanted or being out of control.