Monday, September 8, 2008

To Autumn by 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 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.

3 comments:

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore said...

BACKBENT SCRIBES

An underwater oceanographer looks through his
round porthole and sees a

celestial city riding on silver clouds

An astronomer glues his eyes to a telescope’s eyepiece and
sees a convoy of whales just heading out

from a lunar orbit after a meeting of the Shoosh Clan

I look down at this page in the
act of writing and see

millennia of backbent scribes trying to
get it down in words before it

all turns back into sugar

The downpour is ceaseless but as we
glance out through the falling strands of water we might

catch a glimpse of the pearl necklaces God
dangles down from The Beloved’s neck

just near enough to earth to
entice us both forward and upward

with a glitter in our eyes only
magnified by the sights we see

A thundercloud that opens on Odin’s Peak

A rainbow backdrop to all the oceans
clapping their hands for joy at God’s

fishy banquet day after day

and at night when moonlight spread its
elegant silken tablecloth out on the waves

JoNelle said...

Ode to Quiet

Beyond the pond the trees ring.
They saw the world awaits; {but this, this is my pantry; this is my Mason jar.}

This, through the wide angle of a soda bottle, is my world. Alien though I am:having no bark,bearing no class.

I’m here for the ring
of trees,
the source of blue.
How long have I been standing?

Here, waiting for the snow wetting my eyelashes? My cheeks numb now—my tongue slows and meets winter.
I stick out my tongue to meet

frozen air. So much silence,
the air is lighter,
the night heavier.
The wax for today is yellow.

The snow will lock.
The torrent secured with a dead
bolt and a hectagon’s
worth of combination.


Since I sent my question into the ice. A leaf impaled on the barbed wire fence scratches at me
I look at the ring of pines to

the left of the cleavage of sand
and rock. The pond is silent
and longing to rush the snow
to get off the road. I walk

through the deep crust snow
And join the circle of pines to become one with the world of
sap and spiders.

anonymous said...

Check out this romantic ode if you want.
http://alivelystone.blogspot.com/