To Autumn by John Keats
In early autumn there is a pause when the change seems almost imperceptible. The light falls differently and the evenings arrive a little sooner. Leaves begin to loosen from the trees. The air carries that unmistakable sense that one season is delicately giving way to another. That is why I return to John Keats’s “To Autumn”, my favourite poem of this nostalgic time of the year.
I first recorded my reading of this poem in October 2021 after a walk in the autumn sunshine. The beauty of Keats’s poetic language brings a sense of abundance. This is the months of harvest and thanksgiving. The aroma of pumpkin pie and apple cidar fill homes, along with memories of past autumns.
An autumn path glowing with fallen leaves beneath the trees. (Photo from Rebecca Budd’s archives, October 21, 2021.)Keats does not ask autumn to be anything other than what it is. He does not hurry past its ripeness because winter is coming. He notices apples bending the branches. He speaks of gourds swelling on the vine and grains being gathered. Hardworking bees still fly among the flowers and in the evening sky above swallows assemble, poised for movement.
Golden autumn leaves beside the water, with sunlight filtering through the trees. (Photo from Rebecca Budd’s archives, October 21, 2021)“To Autumn” reminds me that change does not diminish the beauty of the present moment. It is an invitation to enter the season with expectation. Transitions are not an interruption of life, but part of its rhythm. What spring awakened and summer nurtured has become autumn’s harvest. The gold and red colours remind me that transformations are part of being alive. And that gives me great comfort.
Rebecca
https://youtu.be/3CIgZLun3MY?si=-7QivxpqysnbIyCE
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.