In Keats poem, the text is divided into two
parts, the first one, full of life and joy, and the second one, full of sadness
and freezing cold.
The grasshopper is associated with the
jolly and hot summer, while the cricket is related to the winter and the cold.
Both parts of the poem are divided by the 9th
line: “The poetry of earth is ceasing never”, where the first part presents the
summer, where life returns and everything is happy and wonderful. To enjoy the
season, however you have to endure the pain of the harsh second part of the
poem that is the winter, where life nearly ends, and the happiness fades away
to be covered by a snowy cover of sadness.
The poem also presents two different ways
of seeing life, the first one is the optimist, without taking in account the worries,
compared with the summer, and this presents people who don’t take life too seriously,
so they can live better, without stress. On the other hand, the second one
presents the cricket’s point of view that is very worried for his life and
takes everything too seriously.
But at the end of the poem, the grasshopper
is confused with the crickets, which shows that in moments of drowsiness, roles
can be swapped and the characters can be different depending on the situations
they are found in.
Also, the poem is an intertext of the known
fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper:
Once there lived
an ant and a grasshopper in a grassy meadow.
All day long the ant would work hard,
collecting grains of wheat from the farmer's field far away. She would hurry to
the field every morning, as soon as it was light enough to see by, and toil
back with a heavy grain of wheat balanced on her head. She would put the grain
of wheat carefully away in her larder, and then hurry back to the field for
another one. All day long she would work, without stop or rest, scurrying back
and forth from the field, collecting the grains of wheat and storing them
carefully in her larder.
The grasshopper
would look at her and laugh. 'Why do you work so hard, dear ant?' he would say.
'Come, rest awhile, and listen to my song. Summer is here, the days are long
and bright. Why waste the sunshine in labour and toil?'
The ant would ignore him, and head bent, would
just hurry to the field a little faster. This would make the grasshopper laugh
even louder. 'What a silly little ant you are!' he would call after her. 'Come,
come and dance with me! Forget about work! Enjoy the summer! Live a little!'
And the grasshopper would hop away across the meadow, singing and dancing
merrily.
Summer faded
into autumn, and autumn turned into winter. The sun was hardly seen, and the
days were short and grey, the nights long and dark. It became freezing cold,
and snow began to fall.
The grasshopper
didn't feel like singing any more. He was cold and hungry. He had nowhere to
shelter from the snow, and nothing to eat. The meadow and the farmer's field
were covered in snow, and there was no food to be had. 'Oh what shall I do?
Where shall I go?' wailed the grasshopper. Suddenly he remembered the ant. 'Ah
- I shall go to the ant and ask her for food and shelter!' declared the
grasshopper, perking up. So off he went to the ant's house and knocked at her
door. 'Hello ant!' he cried cheerfully. 'Here I am, to sing for you, as I warm
myself by your fire, while you get me some food from that larder of yours!'
The ant looked
at the grasshopper and said, 'All summer long I worked hard while you made fun
of me, and sang and danced. You should have thought of winter then! Find
somewhere else to sing, grasshopper! There is no warmth or food for you here!'
And the ant shut the door in the grasshopper's face.
It is wise to
worry about tomorrow today.
And there we can
clearly see the meaning of the fable, and in a way that of the poem too.
The words in the
poem that portray the pleasures of nature are mainly the ones in the first
eight lines, in the optimistic part of the poem. These words are mainly
adjectives and nouns, and in a lower proportion, verbs, e.g.: birds, hot,
new-moon, lead, summer luxury, delights, fun and pleasant.
The rhyme of the
poem is steadier in the first part of the poem, while in the second part the
rhyme changes, showing a difference of scene.
Finally, in the
poem, it is shown how although you can think that sadness will last forever,
there is always an end to it, and happiness
will flourish again, renewing the cycle that is portrayed in the whole poem
Keats vividly
portrays the never-ending pleasures of nature, because it offers us a circle between
the seasons that never stop, like life. That’s why you have to appreciate
everything you have and work to have a better future, because although there
will always be an opportunity to succeed, we never know what will happen to us
in the future.
