Ode to Autumn/ John Keats

ODE 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-eaves 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'erbrimmed 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,
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.

This, the last of Keats' odes was published in 1820. The poem shows Keats in a rich mood of serenity. Autumn is not regarded here as the prelude to winter, but it is a season of mellow fruitfulness - a season of ripeness and fulfilment. The Ode gives a graphic description of the season of autumn with all its richness. The first stanza describes its gifts of ripe fruits and new crops of flowers. The second stanza gives an authentic image of autumn through living personifications like those of a reaper, a gleaner and a wine-grower. The third stanza describes the music of autumn, the plaintive singing of the gnats, the bleating of lambs, the chirp of the crickets and the soft tremble of the red breast.

In the 'Ode to Autumn', Keats wrote a poem which shows Greek spirit and Greek way of writing more than any other poem in the English language. It is classical in the true sense of the word. There is to be found here, no romantic strangeness or mystery, no emotional agitation. Everything is simple, direct and clear, and the poem is pervaded throughout by a mood of serene tranquility. Moreover, the living  personifications of autumn are exactly in the myth-making mode of the ancient Greeks.

The 'Ode to Nightingale' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' may have a greater appeal by reason of their pathos and glow of emotion, but the 'Ode to Autumn' is unique in its rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness. The exqusite sense of unity and proportion leaving a single art impression, the rich but the subdued melody of the long lines, perfectly adapted tot he mood of brooding and mellow contentment, the wonderful description of Nature for the sake of Nature, tinged with that sweet sensuousness which is a trait in the poet's nature, the charming and vivid personifications of Autumn in the Greek manner, the absence of subjectivity and melancholy- all these fully deserve the eulogy of the subtlest critic. Swinburne speaks of this ode as 'perhaps the nearest to absolute perfection.'!