As the nights draw in summer is fading away and the cool Autumn days are here. I was inspired by John Keats poem To Autumn which I posted last week for national poetry day. For this week’s post, I’ve written a poem based on the autumn season.
I’ve chosen to #ShareAPoem by John Keats called To Autumn or Ode to Autumn. Autumn is one of my favourite seasons and Keats poem really captures the essence of the season in his famous first line.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Keats wrote it in September over 200 years ago when he was taking a walk in Winchester. It’s reflective tone is something I can relate to. His vision is moving; especially if you consider that he was just 23 years old and never saw Autumn again in England as he moved away to Rome and died shortly after from tuberculosis.
To Autumn
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.
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.
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.
