TO AUTUMN
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,
Drowsed 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 cider-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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
- John Keats, 1795-1821*
*To Autumn was written on September 19, 1819 and first published in 1820. The poem is in the public domain.
Easter is traditionally associated with springtime, a time of rebirth and regrowth. But in southern climes it falls in autumn, that “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. I have always admired the John Keats poem, which encapsulates so much of what I love about this time of year - although at present it feels more like winter!
The Pre-Raphaelites and their contemporaries, whose works I’m currently revisiting, recognised Keats as a kindred spirit. Several of them, including John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Arthur Hughes, John William Waterhouse, George Frederick Watts and Walter Crane, depicted scenes from his verses. In 1894 Kelmscott Press published The Poems of John Keats with elaborate wood-engraved borders and initials designed by William Morris (pictured below).
I’m flying to London in mid-September, the first month of the English autumn and the very same month in which Keats composed To Autumn. I’ve just remembered that Keats House in Hampstead is only minutes away from where I’ll be staying. A return visit is long overdue.
Meanwhile, Happy Easter everyone.
Pictured top: Deborah Klein, Orange Tree, 2023, (study), acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 10 x 10 cm. The work, which takes an identically titled embroidery designed by May Morris as its point of departure, is part of One Hundred Faces 2023 at Playing in the Attic, Talbot, Vic. The exhibition opens on Saturday April 22 and runs to the end of May.
