Happy Earth Day, to all. I remember turning the earth 50 years ago with my 5-year-old classmates as we planted little saplings at our elementary school. Now, 50 years later, I look back and savor the many hours I have spent on trails and shores, appreciating the earth. So much of my writing is inspired by the Earth.

I selected today’s sonnet with our earth in mind. It’s a variation of our familiar Petrarchan form, and written by English and romantic author Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855). The poem it titled, simply, “Grasshopper and Cricket.”

Grasshopper and Cricket, by Mary Russell Mitford

How oft, amid the heaped and bedded hay,
Under the oak’s broad shadow deep and strong,
Have we sat listening to the noon-day song
(If song it were), monotonously gay,
Which crept along the field, the summer lay
Of the grasshopper. Summer is come in pride
Of fruit and flower, garlanded as a bride,
And crowned with corn, and graced with length of day:

But cold is come with her.
We sit not now
Listening that merry music of the earth,
Like Arid beneath the blossomed bough;
But all for chillness round the social hearth
We cluster.–Hark! a sound of kindred mirth
Echoes! O wintry cricket, welcome thou!