To Autumn

John Keats (1795-1821)

         Prolific English romantic poet & a qualified surgeon, John Keats was born in London in 1795 to a stable keeper who had married his master's daughter. Keats wrote poetry for about six years & was published for about four years during his short life. He moved to Rome, Italy after falling ill to (suspected) tuberculosis, which later became the cause of his demise at age 25.
         John Keats penned To Autumn after a walk he took one Sunday during autumn. He spoke of it in a letter he wrote, dated September 22, 1819. He wrote, "How beautiful the season is now - how fine the air - a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather - Diana skies-I never like stubble-field so much as now - aye, better then the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm - in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it."

Season of mists & mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load & bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

& fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, & plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

& still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd 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-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath & all its twinèd flowers;

& 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? Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

& touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river swallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

& full grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; & now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

& gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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