This archetypal appeared successful Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter—sign up here.
On September 19, 1819, aft walking on the River Itchen successful Hampshire, England, the 24-year-old writer John Keats—who had, earlier that year, completed “Ode connected a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and different now-famous works—composed what would go 1 of the astir beloved autumn poems successful the English language: the aptly titled “To Autumn.”
We know, due to the fact that connected Tuesday, September 21st, Keats wrote astir it to his person John Hamilton Reynolds:
How beauteous the play is now. How good the aerial – a temperate sharpness astir it. Really, without joking – Dian skies. I ne'er liked stubble-fields truthful overmuch arsenic present – aye, amended than the chilly greenish of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble plain looks warm, successful the aforesaid mode that immoderate pictures look warm. This struck maine truthful overmuch successful my Sunday’s locomotion that I composed upon it.
The resulting poem was aboriginal included successful Keats’s 1820 postulation Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, and is inactive wide work today, for bully reason. “The poem is well-rounded successful each sense—all 5 senses, to beryllium exact,” writes Caitlin Kimball. “Visions of abundance and frantic manufacture output to delicious indolence, and the poem’s luxuriously airy touches, fragrances, and tastes culminate successful a delicate but persistent chorus.” But helium is clear-eyed astir the calamity of autumn, too. “As overmuch arsenic the writer has absorbed his senses successful an essence isolated from himself, making nary evaluations oregon claims for transcendence, helium has taken pains to rescue and sphere the play whole—diminishment and all.”
Soon aft penning the poem, alas, Keats would admit the signs of tuberculosis successful his lungs, an unwellness helium knew well, arsenic it had killed his younger member Tom; helium would dice from it little than 2 years later.
English (US) ·