John Keats

It is windy here, so we will read an autumnal poem. Animistic, I like personified seasons, and I have bolded the lines which brought this poem to mind.

To Autumn (1819)

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.

Axé.


2 thoughts on “John Keats

  1. For some reason, this reminded me of “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver:

    I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
    I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
    into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
    how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
    which is what I have been doing all day.

    Tell me, what else should I have done?
    Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
    Tell me, what is it you plan to do
    with your one wild and precious life?

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