I’ve been somewhat poetically disinclined lately — an end of summer funk, I think. Time to shake it. I’ve no clue what my colors are, but I know I’m “an Autumn” — I love this season, which is painfully beautiful in New England. Yesterday, I found myself feeding the chickens while wrapped in a wonderfully impenetrable fog, and although it didn’t translate well with my little digital camera, I’ll cheat with a shot from another day:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith 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 shellsWith 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’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may findThee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hookSpares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keepSteady 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 barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying dayAnd touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river-sallows, borne aloftOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble softThe redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.~ Keats’ Ode to Autumn
