Class 8 English — Chapter 13: On the Grasshopper and Cricket

What you'll learn

• ▸The Central Theme: Nature's Never-Ending Music
• ▸Symbolism: The Grasshopper and the Cricket
• ▸Contrast Between Summer and Winter
• ▸The Unbroken Cycle of Nature's Song
• ▸Poetic Imagery
• ▸Vocabulary and Word Meaning
• ▸Understanding Homographs
• ▸Literary Form: The Sonnet

Chapter Summary

--- PAGE 1 --- On the Grasshopper and Cricket Unlike The Ant and the Cricket (page 21), which tells a story, this is a nature poem. In it, the grasshopper and cricket do not appear as characters in a story. Rather, they act as symbols, each suggesting something else. Read the poem and notice how 'the poetry of earth' keeps on through summer and winter in a never- ending song. Who sings the song? The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead, That is the grasshopper's — he takes the lead In summer luxury — he has never done With his delights, for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stone there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost; The grasshopper's among some gras…

Practice Questions from this Chapter

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1. Explain grasshopper song. Get Solution →
2. Describe how crickets hear. Get Solution →
3. Discover other singing insects. Get Solution →
4. Who is the author of the poem "On the Grasshopper and Cricket"? Get Solution →
5. In the poem, what insect's voice is heard in the summer? Get Solution →
6. What insect's voice is heard on a "lone winter evening"? Get Solution →
7. According to the poem, what are the birds doing when the grasshopper sings? Get Solution →
8. Where does the grasshopper rest when it is "tired out with fun"? Get Solution →

Did you know?

• 💡 Grasshoppers jump twenty times their body length using powerful legs.
• 💡 Some grasshoppers sing by rubbing their back legs against their wings.
• 💡 Crickets "hear" sounds using special hearing organs on their front legs.
• 💡 Counting cricket chirps can help estimate the outdoor air temperature.
• 💡 Insects make up over 80% of all known animal species on Earth.

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