May I invite you, dear poetry friends, on an autumnal walk alongside this month's poet, John Keats (1795–1821)?

In 1819, the landscape he walked through would inspire his odal hymn to the changing seasons and a love letter to a changing rural landscape that was disappearing from London. His was a difficult journey, from the practicality of changing from a medical career, moving from financial safety to poverty to follow a dream that has become a sort of cliche- the starving artist, entranced by the life of the mind. He was a friend of Leight Hunt, who published his early work and ran the "Hunt Circle" at Hampstead, which included Percy Bysshe Shelley and Keats, among others. It was a dangerous time, politically, and the group was often disparaged with the epitaph "The Cockney School".

Nature, antiquity and an openness to mystery and spontaneous inspiration would mark Keats as one of the Young Romantics, his name inevitably linked to Byron and Shelley, his compatriots of the era. He would coin the term "Negative Capability" to describe the lack of ego by the poet or the selflessness of the artists in order to better be completely receptive to the inspiration of the Muses.

They would all pass through Rome across a period of three years. The eternal city acted as a magnet to unlocking the inspiration of the past- but for Keats, it offered a last, desperate chance. Having seen consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis, carry away his brother Tom and his mother, with his medical training, he recognized the symptoms he began having and had to acknowledge death would find him soon. He parted from his fiancée and muse, Fanny Brawne. Her family finally acknowledged their engagement but did not permit them to marry before he left. Keats continued to write to her until the end of his life, and set sail with his dear friend, Joseph Severn, to Rome via Naples. He hoped the temperate climate of the warm South could offer respite.

After nursing him for many sleepless nights, Severn was at Keats' side when he died 13 weeks after arriving in Rome, in the throes of agony, and helped carry out his wishes for a simple memorial, a lyre with 4 broken strings and without his name. Severn painted many of the Romantics, including Keats and Shelley, who were also friends, and would chronicle the last days of Keats' life in letters to his friends in London, sealing Keats' reputation into literary history. Although perhaps not appreciated in his brief life as he would be in death, his name now sits alongside Shakespeare as one of the greats in English literature.

In 1879, Severn joined his friend in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, where Shelley's ashes are also buried.

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John Keats writing to Fanny Brawne in 1820, soon after discovering his consumption:

"I can do nothing say nothing think nothing of you but what has its spring in the Love which has so long been my pleasure and torment.  On the night I was taken ill when so violent a rush of blood came to my Lungs that I felt nearly suffocated - I assure you I felt it possible I might not survive and at that moment though[t] of nothing but you..."

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On the tomb of John Keats, as he expressly wished:

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water"

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"To Autumn"

by John Keats

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Season of mists and mellow fruitfullness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eve run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plum 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.

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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 though 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.

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Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Think not them, thou has 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.

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Some things to discuss might be the symbolism of autumn as a season of transition from summer to winter through the imagery of ripeness and natural rhythms. A certain poignancy cannot help but enter when we consider Keats was dead by 26, and never saw the autumn of his life, especially in the melancholy last stanza. Are we the bees, not knowing our season is ending? Or is poetry the rich fruit which finally has ripened fully in John Keats' words? We see a sense of life continuing alongside an eternal rhythm, where each thing has fulfilled its purpose, the spring lamb now full grown, the ripe apples pressed to cider and the grains of the earth gathered and stored for the winter. Which lines and images do you find the most compelling? If you are in Rome, be sure to visit the Keats-Shelley House, a museum to the Romantics and a memorial- the last room his eyes gazed upon, unable to write any longer but at peace with fate, able to dictate his wishes for a memorial. In autumn, we are situated between the memory of the warm days of summer and the knowledge that winter awaits. As Keats would surely know from his translations of Greek and Roman works, it was also the season of gathering grapes to be pressed, and feasting on the autumnal bounty, so join me in raising a glass to the memory of John Keats.

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Bonus Poem: A brief reading of Endymion by Rosie Cavaliero. The complete version of Book I of Endymion. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever"-yes, that line!

Bonus Link #1: A virtual tour of Keats House in London, near Hampstead Heath, where he composed most of his most well-known poetry and from where he could see his beloved muse and secret fiancée, Fanny Brawne, from a window in his illness, careful to isolate from her.

Bonus Link #2: More about Fanny Brawne.

Bonus Link #3: A "poem guide" with more details about Ode to Autumn.

Bonus Link #4: The last days of John Keats and the aftermath of his death in London, a 10-min talk by the British Academy.

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If you missed last month's poem, you can find it here.