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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
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“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”

John Keats

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Source
To Autumn
Date
1820
Meaning

Meaning of “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”

Keats begins by finding abundance and beauty in the atmosphere of autumn, treating seasonal maturity as worthy of attention in its own right.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“To Autumn,” in Keats: Poems Published in 1820; Project Gutenberg #23684. The phrase opens a poem whose imagery follows ripening, harvest and the sounds of the season.

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ArtBeautifulGratitudeHappinessJoyNaturePositive Quotes About a Constructive OutlookShortTimePoetry
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Autumn spoke loudly of the beautiful.
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“Autumn spoke loudly of the beautiful.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox · Poems of Optimism · 1913
Meaning & context

Wilcox treats autumn itself as an emphatic expression of beauty, using seasonal color and change as evidence for attentive aesthetic appreciation.

Source details

Poems of Optimism, “Beauty”; Project Gutenberg #7421. The surrounding stanza describes autumn forests as a gallery of vivid colors; the line is poetic and devotional observation, not a scientific claim about aesthetic value.

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Glory be to God for dappled things—
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“Glory be to God for dappled things—”

Gerard Manley Hopkins · Pied Beauty · 1918
Meaning & context

Hopkins opens with praise for patterned difference in nature, celebrating irregular color, texture and variety within an explicitly Christian vision of creation.

Source details

“Pied Beauty,” written in 1877 and first published in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918), represented by Project Gutenberg #22403. The poem is a Christian curtal sonnet of praise; its theological attribution of natural variety remains devotional poetry.

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A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
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“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”

John Keats · Endymion · 1818
Meaning & context

Keats opens the poem by claiming that beauty can continue to give delight beyond the instant in which it is first encountered.

Source details

Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818), Book I, line 1, Project Gutenberg #24280, reproducing the Taylor and Hessey 1818 text. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever” opens the poem’s mythic Romantic meditation on beauty; the statement remains a poetic proposition rather than empirical evidence that every aesthetic experience produces permanent happiness.

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I'd use to-day that cannot last, Be glad to-day and sing.
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“I'd use to-day that cannot last, Be glad to-day and sing.”

Christina Rossetti · Another Spring — Christina Rossetti · 1862
Meaning & context

Awareness that another spring is not guaranteed turns attention toward using the present day rather than postponing every form of gladness.

Source details

“Another Spring,” Project Gutenberg #16950. The stanza begins conditionally—'If I might see another Spring'—so the present-focused conclusion grows from mortality and uncertainty.

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