"Happy Autumn" (by Laura Orem)

Today is the first day of autumn. In keeping with that, and in recognition of the buzz around the new John Keats bio-pic, Bright Star, here is perhaps the most famous autumn poem of all. (Forget that Keats was short, slightly paunchy, and had a high-pitched Cockney voice and an overbite - the new movie presents him as dashingly doomed and romantically handsome. Poetic license.)

"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. 

Keats, intensity and overbite in evidence.

Comments

[Molly Arden]

I've always considered an overbite quite sexy. Consider the possibilities.

[terence winch]

Dear L: Did you see the movie? Is it any good? I loved Keats as a youth, but I have mixed feelings now. I remember going to the Keats-Shelley Memorial, in 1966, which was next to the Spanish Steps in Rome. A lock of Keats's hair was on exhibit. I assume it's all still there.

[Laura Orem]

I haven't seen the movie yet. I'm cheap, so I'll probably wait until it's on Netflix.

I think Keats, being so young himself, speaks most eloquently to the young. I still love him, but the love is more nostalgic...God, that makes me sound like I'm a hundred and five.