A Latter-day Bluestocking

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As the air gets chillier, the days shorter, and the memory of summer begin to gather in a miasma I often find myself reflecting on more light-hearted times as I physically and mentally prepare for the short, cold days of winter.  Often melancholia sets in as the leaves begin to turn and finally fall; a reminder that all care-free delights must end.  But even as the earth prepares itself to sleep there is a sense of  promise, an assurance of future renewal.  Since I, myself, lack the talent to capture the essence of what autumn means to me I offer an ode from my favorite poet of the Romantic period, John Keats.

 To Autumn
John Keats, 1795–1821

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 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 had o’er-brimm’d their clammy shells.

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 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.