As we slowly slide into Autumn with the first frost of the new season stealing upon us last night I awakened to the sweet crisp chill air. 

This brought to mind a poet whose work I relished as young; snuggled into bed I would read his words aloud, enraptured by their beauty, their cadence; his verse so rich and full in sound and meaning.

Below is a poem by John Keats that captures this season so well. Take a minute or two to read aloud, revelling in his exquisite eloquent Romantic poetry.

Ode 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.