Question

Determine the rhyme scheme of the following poem. Don't forget to consider slant rhyme or eye rhyme.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

by John Keats


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 stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.


December 30, 1816

Answer 1

The rhyme scheme in the poem is: a b b a a b b a c d e c d e.

There is no end couplet, which makes this poem a Petrarchan sonnet.

Petrarchan sonnet consists of fourteen lines, the first eight lines (also called octave) follow the scheme: a b b a a b b a, and the rhyme scheme of the following six lines (also called sestet) may vary.