It’s frankly sad that a well-loved poem becomes a cliche, I was walking to the train station yesterday and the view from our hill was beautiful, leaves changing colour, low morning sun, wraiths of mist slowly melting and I remembered that Keats probably has never been bettered.  But because so many people know the poem,  it would be considered naff to quote it, oh no, you have to find something that no-one else has heard of so that you may appear learned and well read.  Never mind that it might not be as good.

Anyway, here’s a message, boil your bird seed trays, people. There is a hideous virus killing off our small birds, and contaminated bird feeders are helping to spread it.  Anyone who cares about the avian population will probably already have done this, and bought in a shedload of bird food for the forthcoming winter.

I have been clearing out the garage for the first time since we moved here.  Yes, that is embarrassing, but even more so is the fact that only one person applied for my freecycled bathroom cabinet, and when we offered to drop it off to her she did not respond.  I have many more unwanted articles to shift, in order to achieve my dream of being able to walk in a straight line from the garage door to the tumble dryer at the back.

So, without further ado, sit up straight, hands on desks, and listen.

 

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’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 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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

John Keats