To Autumn

I've felt a little blue lately, with summer coming to an end. It doesn't affect me in the way it has in the past. I'm not going back to school or teaching, David's not "going back" to work because he never left it, and I'm not sending any little ones to school or anything. But there still is something slightly mournful about the ending of the summer season. Each summer is born with such hope and joy and life. And when it ends, it ends. It's not coming back. I read Dandelion Wine this summer. I loved it. Not at first, but by the end it had me. It describes how each summer is encapsulated in bottles of dandelion wine made from that summer. All the events and memories can be found in a single bottle. I wish I could concoct an elixer such as that. The narrator made a list of rites and traditions as well as revelations and new events. This summer was filled with the rites of swimming, campfires, ice cream, libraries, reading, walks, etc. But there were several new revelations that filled it as well.
With all this, I was reminded of the poem that made me fall in love with John Keats. I read it in high school and have been a devote Keats reader ever since. And it made me think I could be a poet. That ship has sailed, but I still love Keats. His word choice is so full. His images, like a painting. This poem helps to remind me of the beauty of Autumn. It has a melancholy radiance. But enough describing the poem. Here's the poem.


 TO AUTUMN.
                                            1.
    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.
                                            2.
    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.
                                            3.
    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.

Thank you, Keats. I can move on to Autumn now.