Autumn

Bryony berries looking like jewels strung along the hedgerow.

I'm not the first to post John Keats' poem but it's so lovely it bears reading more than once I think:) The photographs are from a short trip to Norfolk last week to attend my Uncle Vic's funeral, it's quite a long way so I decided to stay over a couple of nights and renew my acquaintance with this lovely part of England. It's some years since I was last there and this visit has made me resolve to go back more often. I'm not likely to be around much for the next three weeks or so, though I'm hoping to get at least one more post about Norfolk done before I leave for a two week stay in the USA next weekend.
Clicking on the photos will improve most of them.


To Autumn (1819)

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-eves 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.




The photos
Wild crab apples and hawthorn berries
Hazel nuts (taken near home not in Norfolk)
A recently harvested cornfield
Small tortoiseshell butterfly on wild mint
Damselfly (Bluetailed damselfly I think)
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