Chances are you’ve heard of John Keats. He was a Romantic poet who wrote on the precipice between life and death. Because Keats was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the beginning of his poetic career, a career that ended with his early death at age 25, he wrote with the awareness that every day took him one step closer to an early grave.
Keats’ poems are some of the most masterful poems I’ve ever read—but also some of the most intimidating to get through. There’s so much going on at once! That’s why, when I get my hands on one of Keat’s poems, I get my cup of coffee and sit down ready to read the poem over and over. Each pass crystalizes the beauty and profundity of the poem a little bit more. It’s like peeling an onion; what first meets the eye is just one layer of many.
Let’s narrow our focus down to one ode in particular: “To Autumn.”
“To Autumn” is a poem of many readthroughs. On the first read, you might only catch the precision of Keats’ word choice, like “to swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells.” Each verb and noun falls from a reader’s lips with such intention. Upon a second read, you might notice the imagery surrounding autumn, the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” when “barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.” A third read brings to light the contrasts—but also the similarities—between autumn and spring. And upon a fourth read, you could catch a glimpse of Keats’ commentary on mortality. The beauty of life always culminates in death; winter always succeeds autumn. This poem, however, ends by lingering in autumn.
Read through “To Autumn” and see if you catch my interpretation—or if you have a completely different one!
To Autumn
By John Keats
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.
~Claire S.