To Autumn

It was on this day in 1819 that John Keats wrote the last of his odes, "To Autumn," which the critic Harold Bloom called "as close to perfect as any shorter poem in the English Language." The ode begins:

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