Friday 31 October 2014

TO AUTUMN. John Keats (1795-1821)

its almost done, Autumn that is and Winter is almost upon us. For us in the Tropics Winter is the good season, for those in temperate lands, in Winter the land sleeps and all kinds of hardships reign.
its poem of the week! , thus this revisit to this beautiful poem by the immortal Keats... 

  John Keats (1795-1821)
                                 TO AUTUMN.
                                            1.
    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-eves run;
    To bend with apples the moss’d 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’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
                                            2.
    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,
        Drows’d 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 cyder-press, with patient look,
            Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
                                            3.
    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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


Harmon lists To Autumn as the most anthologized poem in the English language. It was written on September 19, 1819, and published the following year. To Autumn can be found in:
  • Keats, John. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. London: Talor and Hessey, 1820. (as found in the Noel Douglas replica edition printed by London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., 1927.)
  • Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition). New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
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