"Realms of Gold"

Today is Halloween and the birthday of the English poet John Keats, who described autumn as a "season of mist and mellow fruitfulness."

After two stormy days that were much closer to Percy Shelley's depiction of the season —"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being" — I slip back into Keats's quiet vision. Autumn as a time of reflection and poetry, of observation and even of revelation.

Here is my favorite Keats poem, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer":

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

5

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

10

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.