To Autumn

I walked this evening in the gloam as the sky tuned first vanilla, then calico, then inky black as darkness fell. I love this time of year and I thought about one of my favorite poems, "To Autumn", by John Keats. It is considered one of the greatest poems in the English language because it is almost perfectly descriptive. In other words, the "I" of the author is hardly in evidence. Keats called this "negative capability" if memory serves me right and it is the goal of poetry (or was until everyone started prattling on about themselves in the 20th century). It is the ability to see clearly because one is not standing in one's own way. If only we cultivated this ability and applied it to business, relationships etc. This isn't a cold or impersonal attitude. On the contrary, it is precisely in those moments when we forget ourselves and our sense of "I" and look with wonder at a person or an object or perform an action correctly or morally that we are truly free.

I have visited where Keats died in Rome and read two or three biographies about him. He is second only to Shakespeare to me. He died when he was 25 and had written for only 4 years. He was a serious artist who left an enduring legacy. How different from our pop stars and beatniks.


John Keats (1795-1821)

TO AUTUMN  

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,
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.

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.

A song by the English folk singer Nick Drake to accompany that captures the mood of  such an evening. Another bright star who eclipsed too soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2jxjv0HkwM