'The poetry of Earth is never dead,' Keats wrote in his sonnet 'On the Grasshopper and the Cricket'. What is this poetry It is the abundance, diversity and particularity, which this book explores, not only in the natural world but in human cultures, religions, languages, and of course, poetry - in the usual sense - written in these many languages. Those three essential qualities pervade all of Earth's seemingly inexhaustible treasury, which can no longer be taken for granted, since so much of it is being over-exploited, recklessly damaged or even destroyed forever. Poetry, phonetics, theology, ecology and politics are treated as distinct but not separate and the book makes some connections. In considering a wide range of poems, it reflects on themes such as poetry and presence; 'the deep power of joy'; self which 'flashes off frame and face'; mortal beauty which, Hopkins said, keeps warm our wits to the things that are; and imagination, which Mary Wollstonecraft called 'the true fire stolen from heaven'.