This is one of the finest of poems written in the English language by one of the great romantic poets. It is melancholy, full of the sights sounds and scenes of autumn and lies heavy on the senses. Written on September 19 1819 after a walk John Keats shows us vividly the change of the season – the fullness and ripening of it all.
He was, as romantic poets were, concerned with nature and the human relationship to it and it is sad that although he wrote this wonderful celebration at the age of 24 he died a year after.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
The digital artwork above is by Robin Rowlands, entitled: Autumn Cycle
Daniel is away back to university. He left only half an hour ago and l miss him already.
This poem in its way is a celebration of progress ~Keats himself seems to totally accept the natural world, a mixture of ripening, fulfillment, dying, and death. It makes me think of the seasons of life; it makes me wonder where l will meet Autumn in my life. As for Daniel, he is just at the beginning- lucky lad.
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