Autumn? Or something.... more?

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.

 

 

I think I find this Keats poem quite the spectacle with its inherent lack of a love interest, and more involved romantic nature. In that absence, there is still Keats' self inclusive image and the comparative scene he holds it against. The first stanza is quite recurring in Keats' poems, as it usually, as it does here, describe some Romantic scene laced with the purpose to go forward beyond marveling the wonder of nature. The interesting part of this particular stanza is its distinct intial spring-like feel with the vibrance and life in everything described, however as the last line says its time to move on not begin. This led me to consider the season to be the summer of spring, where everything has matured and is picturesque, yet not quite in the stage of preparation and dormancy. Amidst this particularly peculiar seasoning, lies the second stanza, the one where the figure of Keats is present. The figure is projected from Keats, which does give it an address feel even though the figure could very well be himself. I consider the figure to be Keats for the emotion intertwined with it, a sense of solitude and appreciation in the sense of observation. The wonderful romantic world, of which Keats swooned philosophically,  past over him in its many vibrant senses, from the very tangible to the more perceived. However, even as that is all fine, dandy, and time lapsing, it still brings as much joy as watching a plant change, slowly and indefinitely. While this is indeed the world to lose oneself, especially if out of a more human sense of real, the time and setting mix with the underlying solitude to forbode an inevitable and rather disheartening change. Since it is an awkward season as priorly mentioned, it is seemly to miss certain things that would be normal in a more cut and dry time. Instead, the wind of change, the coming of autumn upon the soft caressing breeze, carries its own tune and therefore its own value. But as the time would have it, the denizens the figure observed in the chaotic upheaval of season, now sense too the forthcoming, and move to intercept their instinctual response. And so as the wind moves on, so does the season and its participants, leaving the figure with but a flicker of what was right before their eyes. While very open in this sense, applying to Keats seems to fill out a time where he pondered an ideal imagined scene, that too was plagued by his real-time lonesome state, something he despised. He'd much rather be in company than anything else, so a skitter in the leaves won't make such good company. This is the time that he perhaps thought that he should seek a more hospitable place before he too was lost in the wind, adrift his lonely floatsome amidst a decaying sea of blinding wonder.