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 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'erbrimm'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 twinèd 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 barrèd 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.

In 1999 Winchester City Council commissioned Matthew Francis to write eight poems for a walking tour of the city as part of the Celebration of Literature.  His poem City Autumn, a response to Keat's To Autumn, won the  Gahering Swallows Prize for the best poem by a published poet (taken from Dragons by Matthew Francis, 2001).

Offices have no seasons.  This morning,

as every Thursday, two maintenance women

sprayed the unchanging leaves of our atrium rainforest.

We had another rainforest, wet coats by the door.

 

But sometimes I almost think a leaf-toast smell

winds itself into the air-conditioning.

The day closes early.  I stand at the window

watching the lava of rear lights ooze its way home.

 

Autumn: a place between stations.  In the subways

young men sit stiff-legged as guys, asking for pennies.

And once I came out of the tube to find the sky

a whirl of commuter black, the swallows passing through.