General introduction
This short ode
[E1]
[ES1]
[F1]
[I1]
is often considered to be one the ripest fruit of Keats’ poetic production. Moreover, it is a perfect example of what its author called “negative capability”.
[E1]
Far from the attitude of the “wordsworthian poet”
(see Letter to R. Woodhouse), Keats refuses to approach Nature as a mirror of his own interior world of feeling and emotions. Reversing the pattern of most Romantic poetry, he chooses to leave his own point of view apart and to be literally “haunted” by the presence and spirit of the World itself: this is the only earnest way of reaching beauty, its real core and the true object of art.
Read the text
I
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.
II
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.
III
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.
ACTIVITIES
Comprehension and interpretation
- Skim the text and see whether there is a prevalence of abstract or concrete images.
-
- What kind of environmental background does the poet adopt? Does this choice tell us something about his attitude towards society?
- Are there any human characters in the poem? Why is it so, in your opinion?
- Who does the poet speak to?
-
The poet faces Nature through physical perception. Look at stanza I:
- what senses are involved here? (Support your statement by quoting words and expressions)
- what idea are all the images of fruit and plants linked to?
- All the images in Stanza II are linked to the same agricultural activity: what is it? Can you find links with the images in Stanza I?
- What are the protagonists of Stanza III? Through which of their qualities are they described?
