190 years and three days ago, John Keats wrote his “Ode to Autumn,” and, while the astronomical equinox isn’t until tomorrow, it’s a nice way to start the week. Here’s the first stanza; you can read the rest of it here.
- 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.