The ninth line of the poem, "The poetry of earth is ceasing never," is the closest in meaning to the first line, "The poetry of earth is never dead." They both make use of the same metaphor, a poetic device where the author compares two unalike things by saying that one thing is another. The beauty and sounds of the earth are said to be a kind of "poetry." Keats suggests that the noises made by birds in spring and the grasshoppers in summer, as well as the silence of the frost in winter and the crickets "song" by the stove, constitute a kind of poetry: these sounds are, at times, rhythmic and expressive, and they never goes away completely. When the birds tire in summer, it is time for the grasshoppers to take "the lead," and when the winter comes, the cricket is warmed by the stove and chirps inside, away from the cold and silence outside. His "song" reminds the speaker of the grasshopper in summer.