Thought I'd jump right to it, a little early, I know.

Spring and Fall: To a young child
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

I feel the urge to post a Keats, in honor of the newly release bio-pic called, "Bright Star" about Keats. I think I will only post the last stanza (I like it best) and if you like, go find the rest!

To Autumn
by John Keats


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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Saffron wrote:I feel the urge to post a Keats, in honor of the newly release bio-pic called, "Bright Star" about Keats. I think I will only post the last stanza (I like it best) and if you like, go find the rest!

Anybody seen the movie yet? Good, bad or something else?

"To Autumn"--number three in popularity according to William Harmon in 500 Top Poems. It's great how this poem ends so quietly, like the unusual symphony that ends without any flourish. But that is the view of the poem about Autumn's role in the natural process, in which the endings--in which death--are perhaps even more to be valued than the beginnings. This poem truly "watches life with affection!"

Now, how do you suppose a 24-year-old could have written this?

Saffron wrote:

Saffron wrote:I feel the urge to post a Keats, in honor of the newly release bio-pic called, "Bright Star" about Keats. I think I will only post the last stanza (I like it best) and if you like, go find the rest!

Anybody seen the movie yet? Good, bad or something else?

As a Keatsian, I really want to see it, but it'll be absent from the multiplex. Will most likely be seeing this one on DVD. A plug for a great biography, Walter Jackson Bate's John Keats.

DWill wrote: Now, how do you suppose a 24-year-old could have written this?

It is amazing.

Had a little trouble posting?. Nothing a little Moderator housekeeping couldn't fix.

DWill wrote: As a Keatsian, I really want to see it, but it'll be absent from the multiplex. Will most likely be seeing this one on DVD. A plug for a great biography, Walter Jackson Bate's John Keats.

It opens in the DC area on Sept. 25th! I know what I am doing after work on Saturday!

Poetry Foundation's poem of the day --

Autumn Sky

by Charles Simic

In my great grandmother's time,
All one needed was a broom
To get to see places
And give the geese a chase in the sky.

•

The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.

•

Oh Cynthia,
Take a clock that has lost its hands
For a ride.
Get me a room at Hotel Eternity
Where Time likes to stop now and then.

•

Come, lovers of dark corners,
The sky says,
And sit in one of my dark corners.
There are tasty little zeroes
In the peanut dish tonight.

There are tasty little zeroes
In the peanut dish tonight.

What a line! Anyone have any ideas about it? The delight of nothingness? Momentary non-being when we are comfortable in the darkness?

Saffron wrote:

There are tasty little zeroes
In the peanut dish tonight.

What a line! Anyone have any ideas about it? The delight of nothingness? Momentary non-being when we are comfortable in the darkness?

I don't have any ideas, bright or otherwise. I'd say yours are good. But I do have a less relevant thought about autumn, leading to an idea for a thread. Have you noticed that autumn is the only season whose name comes from Latin rather than the the Anglo-Saxon? And it really does have a different sound than that of the other seasons. Of course, the alternative word 'fall' is Germanic in origin. Why don't the other seasons have two names as well?

If you agree that a large part of poetry is simply the love of and fascination for words, maybe you'd want to spend some time exploring words, perhaps especially origins and evolution of meaning. We could if there's any interest.