Happy Monday. I know that today we had to continue with Shakespeare and Romeo & Juliet, but my theater company went to a theater festival this weekend, I literally am almost asleep right now, because I just came back. So instead this Monday I present you another beautiful creation of John Keats!:
Today we are reading:
TO AUTUMN by JOHN KEATS
TO AUTUMN by JOHN KEATS
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English romantic poet. As a child he lost his two parents, constantly relocated and eventually ended up in Rome. Keats dead at a very young age of only 25 from tuberculosis. Keats was exceptionally sensitive and had a unique way of seeing things. A really heartbreaking fact is that during his short life his poems were not accepted by critics and no one believed Keats to be a poet. In a letter to his friend and love Fanny Brawn he wrote that he will die without leaving a mark in the world. Little did he know that now he is one of the most studied and quoted poets of all time.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
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. 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, Drowsed 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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Autumn is literally my favorite time of the year so this poem is all gushy and cute for me! The descriptions about how everything changes and evolves, is jut too perfect. Sorry for keeping it short today, nevertheless I really hope you will spare time to read this beautiful poem :)
What did you think of TO AUTUMN?
