Ode to Autumn

Ode 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-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed 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'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

by Jeniffer Sams

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-reaped 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.

~ John Keats

Autumn - On the Hudson River, Francis Cropsey, 1860, National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C. 

Autumn

Autumn On The Hudson River, Jasper Francis Cropsey, 1860. National Gallery of Art

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.

~John Keats (1795-1821)

Fall Lighthouse, Lake Michigan, 2006, fred

Keats and Bernini

Fontana della Barcaccia, 1627 (Baroque) - Rome, Italy,
Pietro Bernini (son of Gian Lorenzo Bernini)

At the bottom of the Spanish Steps built to the Piazza di Spagna, Rome leading to the Egyptian obelisk and the Church of Trinita dei Monti on the Pincio Hill, where the 16th-century Villa Medici sits the Fontana della Barcaccia.  As Keats was terminally ill his doctor advised him to take a respite and Keats was said to have 'fallen under Rome's spell and would fall asleep at night outside listening to Bernini's fountain'.  It is of no surprise that one great artist inspired another nor is it a surprise that the fountain of the great Master Bernini's son brought peace and tranquility to Keats in his last days.  Both Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini both were exceedingly talented sculptors and artists and Keats, well.... He can speak for himself.... still....


Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art –

Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art –

  Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

  Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

  Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing of the new soft fallen mask

  Of snow upon the mountain and the moors –

No- yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

  Pillow’d upon my fail love’s ripening breast,

To feel forever it’s soft fall and swell,

  Awake forever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear forever her tender-taken breath,

  And so live ever- or else swoon to death.

-Keats, 1884

Fontana della Barcaccia, 1627 (Baroque) - Rome, Italy,
Pietro Bernini (son of Gian Lorenzo Bernini)

When I Have Fears

The Arcadian Shepherds, Nicolas Poussin

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. 


John Keats


Keats was facing his mortal death and his fears were fears we all have in our lives - will we be remembered, will we do all the things in life we wanted to do, be all the things we hoped to be, loved and was loved, had friendships that were beyond measure, got all our creative passions out in caporal form for others to share with us, learned all there was to learn..... we do not want to be alone and we all want to be loved yet so often we waste what time we have over petty or unimportant matters until it is too late.... Live your lives to the fullest every moment. Love with all your heart, laugh with all your soul, and be joyful with your entire being and then you too will have an Arcadian existence like Poussin painted.

Ode to Psyche ~ Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
 And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear: 


Surely I dreamt today, or did I see
 

The winged Psyche with awakened eyes? 
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
 And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
 Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side 
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
 

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
 

A brooklet, scarce espied:



Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour, 1757,  Antonio CANOVA - Possagno, Venise, 1822

© Musée du Louvre/P. Philibert

A Closer Look, Louvre

'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,


They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;


Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,


As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,


And ready still past kisses to outnumber


At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:


The winged boy I knew;


But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? 


His Psyche true!



O latest born and loveliest vision far


Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!


Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star,


Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,


Nor altar heaped with flowers;


Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan


Upon the midnight hours;


No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet


From chain-swung censer teeming;


No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat


Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.



Cupid and Psyche, 1808, oil on canvas, Benjamin West, On Auction at Christies at Present

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,


Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,


When holy were the haunted forest boughs,


Holy the air, the water, and the fire;


Yet even in these days so far retired


From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,


Fluttering among the faint Olympians,


I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.


So let me be thy choir, and make a moan


Upon the midnight hours;


Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet


From swinged censer teeming;


Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat


Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.



Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane


In some untrodden region of my mind,


Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,


Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:


Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees


Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;


And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,


The moss-lain dryads shall be lulled to sleep;


And in the midst of this wide quietness


A rosy sanctuary will I dress

The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, 1744, Francois Boucher


With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,


With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,


With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,


Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:


And there shall be for thee all soft delight


That shadowy thought can win,


A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,


To let the warm Love in!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What interested Keats particularly in the myth was the fact that Psyche, a mortal, achieved immortality through love.

Sculpture - Antonio CANOVA - Possagno, 1757 - Venise, 1822

Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour

© Musée du Louvre/P. Philibert

Painting - Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808

Painting - Francois Boucher, The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, 1744