A Taste of Autumn

IF EVER I WANTED to step into a landscape to walk with a poet, I would eagerly join John Keats . . . lush bounty, harvest color, the promise of abundant provision. As a season, autumn is not a sign that winter death is near. It is a confirmation of the blessing of a season, the full-bodied experience of an autumn landscape. John Keats’ praise of autumn is one of his finest romantic creations, and one of his last.

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.

​This—this is a rich land of milk and honey and sweet words. Keats’ descriptions are magical personification. Autumn is both friend and co-conspirator with the sun. They work together to ripen the final harvest of apples, gourds, nuts, and honey.

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.

Autumn is a wisp of a woman waiting in her storehouse. The winnowing wind is the faint trace of her hair in the breeze. Then for a moment she drowses outside in the field, perhaps overcome by the heady scent, causing the harvesters to leave a swath of wheat and flowers behind because they are beautiful. And finally, with a heavy head from a full day she watches the cider presses do their work, a sign of her bounty as well.

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.

Autumn has her own song of color and life and sound. She cannot be compared to her sister Spring, and yet their songs are similar. Listen to the sad hum of gnat clouds, the bleat of lambs, the song of crickets, the robin, the swallow.

Autumn is romanticized, but the beauty of every sense is brought to life with an attitude of gratefulness, a recognition that autumn brings life too.