The last great poem John Keats wrote was his ode “To Autumn.” Perhaps it is fitting that it was his final poem, since it is, as Harold Bloom said, “the subtlest and most beautiful of all Keats’s odes, and as close to perfection as any shorter poem in the English language.” It is also fitting that a poem of the harvest and one about the season that ends the year was his last great ode, since Keats’s own brief life would end just two years later.
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 kernal; 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 fine Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy soft hair-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 shallows, 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.
Even though “To Autumn” does not inspire in readers the feelings of dramatic heartbreak that, say, “To a Nightingale,” does, the poem overwhelms us with a beauty and bounty even as it is taking us toward that final season, winter. The first stanza fills the reader’s sense of sight with a lush profusion of vegetation as personified Autumn conspires with the “maturing sun” to “load,” “bless,” “bend,” “fill,” “swell,” and “plump,” the harvest that will be gathered and enjoyed. But the extraordinary richness of the imagery can also be felt, and each time we read this stanza we not only see that profusion but also feel the warmth of that “maturing sun.” And even though that “maturing sun” means also winter is coming, Keats lets us loaf for a while in this perfect setting believing too that this season of abundance will last.
After we reach the end of stanza 1, we might anticipate encountering in the next stanza personified Autumn, with her scythe gleaning vigorously the bounty of this harvest. Instead, stanza 2 invites us to imagine languorous Autumn “amid her store,” or “sitting careless on the granary floor,” or “sound asleep,/Drows’d with the fume of poppies.” “By a cyder-press, with patient look” she watches “the last oozings hours by hours.” The profusion in the first stanza has sated and intoxicated her with the bounty of the annual harvest. Interestingly, Autumn can only watch passively “the last oozings hour by hour.” She is no longer the agent of time she was in the first stanza, but like us, an observer of it. And as we read the stanza, her intoxication becomes ours; we become numb as if we too have been “Drows’d with the fume of poppies.” We are entranced by the visual and sensuous abundance of this autumnal moment and watch those “last oozing hours by hours” momentarily suspended in time.
Autumn’s trance and ours is broken in the final stanza when the speaker asks, “Where are the songs of spring: Ay, where are they?” Does Keats wants us to look back to spring (and youth) or does he want us to leap forward beyond the coming winter to next year’s spring? He does not bother to wait for an answer and poignantly cautions Autumn not to think of spring and hear instead the music of her season:
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 shallows, 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 swallow twitter in the skies.
What follows is a symphony of sorrow, but also of tranquil beauty. The “wailful choir of small gnats mourn” the landscape, while sounds of the lambs, Hedge-crickets, red-breast, and swallows lighten what will be the slowly, spreading darkness of approaching winter. Here, in this closing stanza, Keats composes a music that lifts the spirit of languishing Autumn and that of the reader.
Other readers may disagree and find this in poem notes of “eternal sadness,” which makes sense, since all humans pine for that immutable youth of the mythical prelapsarian world. But in that mythical spring, nothing ripens; all remains as it is, eternally young, but forever static. In Keats’s reality, Autumn repeats its process, returns each year, swelling the earth with nature’s bounty. Even though her “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” cannot disguise the coming decay and disintegration, we still can feel in her abundance and beauty a tranquil joy.