To Autumn

Posted:13 October 2016

Having just returned from our visit to Japan to see this amazing countrys wonderful and unique gardens, shrines and sights, we will shortly be publishing a photo report showing highlights of our trip.

Until then we thought we would leave you with a poem which we discussed at our recent Celebration of the Seasons workshop, To Autumnby John Keats.

Also we wanted to remind you that you have just two weeks left to catch the Georgia OKeefe exhibition at the Tate Modern (ends 30 October) her flower paintings and extraordinary sense of colour are so inspiring!

Georgia OKeefe painting

To Autumnby John Keats

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 mossd 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 oer-brimmed 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-reapd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsd with the fume of poppies, while they 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 watches 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 allows, 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 tremble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.