On September 19, 1819, after walking along the River Itchen in Hampshire, England, the 24-year-old poet John Keats—who had, earlier that year, completed “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and other now-famous works—composed what would become one of the most beloved fall poems in the English language: the aptly titled “To Autumn.” We know, because on Tuesday, September 21st, Keats wrote about it to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds: “How beautiful the season is now. How fine the air – a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking – Dian skies. I never liked stubble-fields so much as now – aye, better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble plain looks warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.” The resulting poem was later included in Keats’s 1820 collection Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, and is still widely read today, for good reason. “The poem is well-rounded in every sense—all five senses, to be exact,” writes Caitlin Kimball. “Visions of abundance and frantic industry yield to delicious indolence, and the poem’s luxuriously light touches, fragrances, and tastes culminate in a delicate but persistent chorus.” But he is clear-eyed about the tragedy of autumn, too. “As much as the poet has absorbed his senses in an essence apart from himself, making no evaluations or claims for transcendence, he has taken pains to rescue and preserve the season whole—diminishment and all.” Soon after writing the poem, alas, Keats would recognize the signs of tuberculosis in his lungs, an illness he knew well, as it had killed his younger brother Tom; he would die from it less than two years later. |
