‘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;’
(lines 1-4)
‘To Autumn’
John Keats
(written 1819)
It’s a poem often quoted around this time of year,
and it’s not hard to see why. Right from
its first few lines, Keats’ glorious ode ‘To Autumn’ epitomises everything that
is so wonderful about the season, not just the misty days and glowing fruit but
also the sense of warm friendship inherent in the cultivation and distribution
of harvest bounty.
The poem is divided into three stanzas (posh term
for ‘verses’), and, to me, this has always seemed to reflect the three distinct
phases through which a British autumn appears to pass. First there is the abundance of life, the
almost celebratory culmination of the year’s growth, exemplified here through
the sun ‘budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees, / Until
they think warm days will never cease’ (lines 8-10).
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| Just because I thought this needed some autumn leaves... Photo taken at Ness Gardens, 21/9/2013, © C.J. Readioff |
In the second stanza, it is the drowsy rest after
activity that is depicted and celebrated.
When I first read this poem (many years ago now!), this section actually
rather confused me, but the clue is in the opening rhetorical question: ‘Who hath
not seen thee oft amidst thy store?’ (line 12).
The ‘thee’ here addresses autumn as if it were an individual capable of
joining in a conversation; yet this also slides neatly into the next ‘thee’ which
refers to a farm worker ‘sitting careless on a granary floor’ (line 14),
exhausted after bringing in the harvest.
Essentially, what Keats is suggesting is that the spirit of autumn is
embodied and personified by characters such as the tired harvester lying ‘on a
half-reaped furrow, sound asleep’ (line 16).
The final stanza shifts the tone still
further. This is the end of autumn now,
and there is a definite sense that winter is just around the corner. The images created now are bleaker, as ‘full-grown
lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn’, and the ‘gathering swallows twitter in the
skies’, ready for their seasonal migration to sunnier climbs (lines 30 &
33). Indeed, it is perhaps this sense of
departure more than anything else that contributes towards the commonly held
view that this poem is, at least to some extent a metaphor for the progression
of life. The Encyclopaedia Britannica
entry claims that ‘the question of
transience is hardly raised’, yet for me it is actually the transience of life
and the unstoppable continuum of the seasons which Keats celebrates here. The sense of passing time is subtle, but it
is there. The bees ‘think warm days will
never cease’; it is the poignantly reflective ‘think’ that is important
here. This transience is not necessarily
a bad thing however, as he writes: ‘Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where
are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-’ (lines 23-4).
To me,
this is one of the most beautiful and perfect poems in the English
language. Autumn has always been my favorite
season – a time of new beginnings (academically speaking), and of plotting new
projects for the winter, a time of cosying into warm woolly jumpers and of crunching
through heaps of brown-gold leaves. The
beauty of Keats’ poem is that it remains understated, and thus simply yet powerfully
creates a succession of images that effectively encapsulate the natural environment of the
season, and thus everything that really makes
autumn.
You can find this poem: -
(a free
online version of the text at Poetry Foundation!)
(an
Oxford World’s Classics anthology of some of Keats’ best loved poetry; if, like
me, you don’t want to stop at Autumn, this is the book for you!)
N.B. ‘To
Autumn’ is a poem of such profound fame that it is frequently reproduced in
popular poetry anthologies. If you have
any collections of ‘nation’s best-loved poems’ lurking on your bookshelves,
have a root around: you’ll probably find this one tucked away somewhere!
You can find out more about Keats:
(Wikipedia!!!)
(a fascinating biography of Keats’ sadly short
life; Encyclopaedia Britannica looks a lot like Wikipedia in layout, but is
more accurate, and also sounds more intellectual in dinner conversation!)
(the website of the house in Rome where Keats died
in 1821, which is now a museum; if you are lucky enough to be going to Rome anytime
soon, this looks as if it would be very much worth having a look at)
(the website of the Keats-Shelley association)
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