Keats on the Itchen
Meanwhile (we have a gloomy note on the economy below), autumn turns slowly golden with "mellow fruitfulness":
In a letter to a friend on 21st September 1819, following a walk along the River Itchen at Winchester, Keats described the impression the scene had made upon him: 'How beautiful the season is now, how fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather. I never lik'd stubble-fields so much as now. Aye, better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble-field looks warm in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.'What he composed was Ode to Autumn.
Thanks to This England for its account of Keats on the Itchen.
| Permalink
| 
