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,
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.

~John Keats

My favorite romantic poet (well almost :p) on my favorite season. I think he just does an amazing job at capturing the bittersweet effect of this time of the year. So many things are at their fullest now, the year has become lush and the air is saturated with a light that doesn't exist at any other time. The summer has exhausted itself now and new things can begin. Always this has been the season of new endeavors for me. New courses of study, new promises, new realizations about what I want my life to be. Year after year it seems to happen in this time, partly because of worldly schedules beyond my control, partly because of my own response to this cessation of heat and brilliant sigh of the world. Who cannot notice nature in autumn? It is the last, longest, sweetest dance of the year, with the finest apparel and most delicious offerings. It is sunlight that doesn't sting and breezes that flirt with winter while still holding summer's hand. In a place that knows cold and heat we delight in the places in-between that cradle our comfort and allow some pause. So I do pause as much as possible and just let autumn do to me as it will, play with my hair, fill my lungs, shine in my eyes. All too soon it will perish like the small fragile leaves of the aspen, leaving longing in its wake. Ahhhhhhhh autumn.