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.
This week’s poem is To Autumn by John Keats.
It’s October at the time of recording and that means I can cover one of my all time favourite poets here on the podcast. I’m far from alone in that estimation. John Keats is considered one of the all time greats in English poetry1. and considering that he only spent 25 years here on earth, it’s a stunning achievement.
Keats was part of the broader romantic movement of English poetry. Romanticism was one of the largest artistic movements of the 17 and 1800’s2. It shaped prose, music, painting and , of course, poetry. Right at the centre of this was John Keats.
He was such a central figure to the movement that he’s become a symbol of sorts for it over the years.3 This is in part due to his sheer skill in poetry but also down to the sheer tragedy that seemed to plague his life.
When we speak of the romantics and their poetry we don’t get far without mention of the Romantic hero. This hero is one who , as academic Northrup Frye pointed out:4
"is placed outside the structure of civilization and therefore represents the force of physical nature, amoral or ruthless, yet with a sense of power, and often of leadership, that society has impoverished itself by rejecting’’ .
On top of this style of rebellious individualism were healthy doses of introspection and melancholy in equal measure.5
It’s not hard to see how the Keats myth would grow to fit this larger than life shape. From the early days of his life, he seemed plagued by some spectre of misfortune. His father died by falling from a horse when John was very young.6 His mother then passed away from Tuberculosis, or consumption as it was known at the time. Tuberculosis seemed to be something that ran in the Keats family bloodline, also claiming his brother George and Keats himself in 1821.7
That combined with Poverty and a travelling lifestyle approaching nomadic, made him seem every inch a living breathing poetic hero.
Far from being a melancholic, misanthrope who craved solitude though, Keats was adored by all who knew him. He was frequently hailed as the life of the party and one of the most amiable people known on the English literary scene.8
That’s not to say that he lacked a solemnity all his own. Despite being so young, by the end of his 25 short years he was a poet and thinker of staggering maturity. Perhaps it was the sobering effects of the aforementioned tragedy over time or perhaps Keats was, as many attest, simply a genius.
By the time of this poem's writing in 1819, Keats was tragically nearing the end of his life. He would have succumbed to tuberculosis and passed away two years later in 1821. We are lucky enough to know many of Keats’ thoughts in these final years, thanks to his meticulous habit of correspondence. Keats was a constant letter sender, but these were no mere check ins and updates. They were journal-like back and forths with some of his closest friends. It is thanks to these documents that we know the dates of many of his famous works and the inspirations behind them as well.
For example we know that this poem was inspired by a simple autumn walk that made an enormous impression on him. All this he wrote in a letter to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds. In this letter he wrote:9
‘’How beautiful the season is now, how fine the air, a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather, Dian skies. I never lik’d stubble fields so much as now—Aye, better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warm—in the same way that some pictures look warm—this struck me so much in my sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.’’
It seems as though Keats has mustered all his considerable poetic might to do that impression justice. In the three stanzas of the poem we see three distinct stanzas with 3 different movements: Stanza one brims with life and abundance, stanza two shows a world where such abundance has been reaped. Finally, stanza 3 is facing into the bleak landscape that the time after the harvest is left with. Finally readers will notice the feast for the senses in each stanza. The first is a tactile verse filled with life and a sense of growth. This is followed by sight in the second, where Keats bears witness to the majesty of the season. Then finally, there is sound in the third, or rather the absence of it. This poetry of the senses was a lifelong pursuit of Keats’10
Those senses are clearly felt by the reader from the very first stanza:
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.
Those first few lines are surely among the most famous in English poetry and set the tone perfectly for Autumn, they are haunting and calm all at once.
There is strong sense of the pastoral, a poem written to glorify an idyllic rural setting,11 in this first stanza. Words like moss’d cottage-trees and thatch eves only reinforce this notion. Though, while it shares the idyllic setting of a pastoral, it elevates the subject of nature much higher than the form. We see that this is in every sense an ode to Autumn, the form that Keats is renowned for.12 Odes seek to glorify something and here it is nature that takes centre stage. The impression that autumn walk made on him, as mentioned earlier, is elevated to brand new heights here.
The language of abundance is laid out in every line. Each one has some image of growth or ubiquity in it. Words like load and bless, bend with apples, fill all fruit with ripeness are seen in every line. The scene he is painting is one of a typical autumn: to swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells.
There is a cornucopia of agriculture and produce laid out for the reader. The glory of the harvest is made clear. Keats is meticulous in his illustration of this time of year and as the poem progresses he maintains that staunch commitment to engaging the senses.
But why exactly is he doing this? In an 1817 letter to brothers George and Tom, Keats wrote:13
‘’what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’’
This term, negative capability would become a cornerstone of Keats legacy. It is a quintessentially romantic concept. The notion of giving oneself over to the sublime and mysterious in their work was very appealing to that generation of artists. This was to make a pure attempt at documenting what is experienced through the senses without rationalisation.
This was something that became an obsession of sorts for Keats; he would pursue it in his work from that point on, truly believing that it was the mark of a great poet to achieve it.
How did one achieve it then? For Keats it took the form of an openness to all experience, a refusal to place judgement on any experience. This removal of prejudice is very reminiscent of the removal of consciousness or personal subjectivity in a work of poetry. Keats believed that a poem could exist in the service of beauty as opposed to needing a much larger theme or meaning.14
This is very clearly an idealistic goal and arguably an unachievable one.
However, in to Autumn, Keats final poetic work, it’s widely agreed that it's as close as he ever came to achieving it.
We can see the contrary nature of negative capability play out in the second stanza:
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.
Immediately Keats chooses to engage his reader with an rhetorical question; Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Here the poet puts a question and so, structure and logic into his poem but is he really addressing the audience? The answer is more than likely no. The thee he is addressing here is more than likely the figure of a reaper or harvester.
We have moved from the idyllic scenes of fields and crops to an empty granary store. Suddenly the abundance that dominated the first stanza is nowhere to be found.
Each bounty has been reaped here and the poem takes on an almost dreamlike quality. Words like sound asleep, Drows'd , and laden head are littered throughout the text immediately putting the reader in mind of sleep.
The figure he is describing whose hair is soft-lifted by the winnowing wind is an extremely idealised harvester. This scene of the peasant farmer engaged in the harvest had become a popular one in Keats time.
Here is an excerpt from academic Liana Vardis essay on the topic:15
This new depiction of the labourer was very much in line with the humanist ideals of the enlightenment, which Keats himself was very taken with.16
There is a slowing down to stillness in this second stanza, a mood in sharp contrast with the vitality of the first.
Particularly in these lines:
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.
Those oozings hours by hours describe the slow decline of Autumn and, simultaneously, the fermentation of food and alcohol with the produce of the harvest. A common practice in Autumn.17
This stilling pace draws the reader's attention to the languid visuals and we watch what Keats describes in a beautifully relaxed manner. Here vision is the sense that Keats wishes to capture with negative capability. If vision is the dominant theme of the second stanza, then it is surely sound that becomes the focus in the third:
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.
The rhetorical question returns once more, a hint of structure in all the beauty to refocus the reader.
Keats has just described an empty landscape, now he describes a silent one. Here the depth of autumn seizes his pastoral landscape; barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day show use the shorter days and low golden light synonymous with the season, whilst the flora has been turned a rosy hue.
Then, without warning, we are reminded that autumn is a time of dying. There is a wailful choir of small gnats mourning, their time on this earth drawing to a close. Even those things we assume eternal are cursed with mortality as even, the light wind lives or dies.
And yet in response to this approaching winter of decay life seems to rally in the final lines and we are left with a truly hopeful image:
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.
Each tiny sound in that still landscape is a tiny act of rebellion, a reminder that Autumn is not the end but rather a stage. Lambs have reached maturity, not unlike the Sun of the first few lines.
The call of the two types of birds in the final line is an oddly soothing image on which to close. It brims with the promise of something better. This poem can be seen as a cyclical one thanks to these lines. We began with abundance, saw it diminish, and now see it hinted at once more. In a way it mimics the actual cycle of the seasons and the reassurance that no matter what might be reaped, life will continue as it always has.
So, why this poem? Keats is one of my favourite poets and I’ve been enraptured by those opening lines since the first time I read them. I don’t think that anything revealed in this episode is new information, as I’ve covered this is one of the most beloved poems in all of English. With that being said, I feel romantic poetry always benefits from closer reading, not to mention being read out loud.
As this is Keats final poem, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to view it as a ‘’swan song’’ a final bow of sorts. Keats would be dead two years after its publication having finally succumbed to consumption. It’s certainly not difficult to read the work as a man facing the end of his life and confronting his own mortality. Why else would he focus with such intensity on the fading and reaping of life? Why would Keats choose such morbid language in the final stanza if not to foretell death? Unfortunately his letters do not support this reading. In his correspondences it was disclosed that Keats coughed up a great amount of blood in 1820 and deemed it Arterial blood and so his death warrant.18
The poem then is simply a reflection on the beauty of nature, one that would make any reader appreciate autumn, it is a wonderful reminder that as the nights grow longer and the winds a little colder, there is still a bounty of beauty to behold in a season that is often considered gloomy. It’s a work of stunning beauty that truly captures what Autumn continues to bring to the world each year and it slows us down just enough to appreciate it.
Voigt, Benjamin. “John Keats 101 by Benjamin Voigt.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2018. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/147110/john-keats-101.
“A Brief Guide to Romanticism.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 2004. https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-romanticism.
Boulger, James D. “Keats’ Symbolism.” ELH 28, no. 3 (1961): 244–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/2872068.
Northrop Frye, A Study of English Romanticism (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 41.
Wilson, James D. “Tirso, Molière, and Byron: The Emergence of Don Juan as Romantic Hero.” The South Central Bulletin 32, no. 4 (1972): 246–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/3186981.
“John Keats.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 13, 2021. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats.
Elliott, G. R. “The Real Tragedy of Keats (A Post-Centenary View).” PMLA 36, no. 3 (1921): 315–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/457195.
Clarke, Mary Cowden, and Charles Cowden Clarke. Recollections of Writers. Google Books. 2nd ed. London: C. Scribner's sons, 1870. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WqAQAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PP6&hl=en.
Hirsch, Edward. ‘’To JH Reynolds, Sep 21 1819’’. In Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. New York: Modern Library, 2001, 345.
Wolfson, Susan J., and Garret Stewart. “Language and Keats.” Essay. In The Cambridge Companion to Keats, 135–51. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007.
MasterClass. “Poetry 101: What Is a Pastoral Poem? Learn about the Conventions and History of Pastoral Poems with Examples - 2021.” MasterClass. MasterClass, August 16, 2021. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-a-pastoral-poem-learn-about-the-conventions-and-history-of-pastoral-poems-with-examples.
Wolfson, Susan J., and Paul D Sheats. “Keats and The Ode.” Essay. In The Cambridge Companion to John Keats, 86–101. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hirsch, Edward. “1817 Letter to George and Tom” Essay. In Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 60
Rejack, Brian, and Michael Theune, eds. Keats’s Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives. Liverpool University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvhn0df8.
Vardi, Liana. “Imagining the Harvest in Early Modern Europe.” The American Historical Review 101, no. 5 (1996): 1357–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/2170176.
“John Keats.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 13, 2021. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats.
Gomme, Alice B., E. H. Binney, and Clara J. Jewitt. “Harvest Customs.” Folklore 13, no. 2 (1902): 177–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1254664.
“John Keats.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 13, 2021. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats.