Beautiful poetry for a beautiful time of year. Thank you to John Keats for his eye which could see this and his vision which led him to write it down.
One of the things I have always loved about this poem is the personification of autumn – it brings the sense of the imaginal world in to focus, as being present. In the same way, when we dream we feel that we are walking through an actual landscape – well we are, but it is a dream landscape. This focus in different ways of understanding ‘landscape’ is very important when trying to understand the ‘inner’ world (what James Hillman called the soul). The inner world is a landscape. It is a landscape as peopled as the landscape we see in the ‘outer’ world, but it is of a different order.
This point about the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds is the essence of depth psychology, and it is where deep, imaginal psychology – the work of beauty and meaning and spirit – differ from the science of a psychology which lives in the mind only. There is nothing wrong with science, obviously (speaking as a researcher who works within a Health and Social Care department of a university I am very comfortable with science and psychology!). But it is limited. The exploration of the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ world – the imaginal, the soul…..that is where the poetics of our work can begin.
So here we have the poem – always worth reading at this time of year. I hope you enjoy it.
1.
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 which 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; and set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees
Until they think warm days will never cease
For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.
2.
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 twine’d flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou doest keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider press, with patient look
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of spring? Aye, 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.
John Keats. Obviously. Fabulous.
personal development work helps people to grow and to become present and full in their lives. Psychotherapists help ‘self-building’, delineating the ‘me’ from the ‘not-me’, facilitating clarity about boundaries, powerfulness about desires, resourcefulness around creativity, and delight
The word vulnerable means to be capable of being wounded. Being human is to live in that capability – we have vulnerable bodies, we are open to being hurt physically and in our hearts (as we reach out for love, attention, affection) all the time. Imagine being on a battlefield without armour, you would be very woundable, very vulnerable. So in life we build armour, we build defences. The psychological defences (keeping closed, staying away from people, being loud, pushy, arrogant, shy….what ever those defences are for you) are ways of trying to reduce that vulnerability. Then our defences make us sad and miserable. There comes a point when we start to risk standing there on the battle field of life without our armour. The exquisiteness of that moment, of that vulnerability, is what connects us to one another and I would suggest is what makes true love possible. That is my valentines weekend post – the exquisiteness of the nakedness of vulnerability. Trembling like a rose in the moment of time between yourself and the one you love.