"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"

Hello

In a few days time, we will be heading East, so this space, for the best part of a fortnight will be fairly quiet, that is until September 21st, when it should be bloging as usual. And who knows, I just might tell you where we have been, what we were doing and how we got on. But before we go I would like to share something with you, and in doing so, achieve a pre-emptive strike against those radio and TV presenters who, without fail, at this time of year, blandly trot out this line: "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," thereby reducing it to one of the most hackneyed lines of English poetry. But John Keats deserves something better than this annual remembrance. So here it is, the poem in full:

             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 mossed 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 brimmed 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-reaped furrow sound asleep,
   Drowned with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
   And sometimes like a gleaner thou dust keep
Steady thy laden hand 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 red-breast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats 1795-1821
from Penguin Classics, 1988

_______________
Cormac McCloskey
Note: This blog, "Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness", was first published on Windows Live Spaces, by me, on 3rd September 2005