The poem’s last stanza offers a mild gesture toward “resolution” in an
ever-unfolding present tense. It is early evening, and the emptied
fields look warm under a pink-tinted sky. The images and sounds are
specific, but the vision is comprehensive: down by the river, we hear
the “wailful choir” of the gnats, while over on the hillside the lambs
bleat. In the hedges the crickets sing, the robin harmonizes in the
garden, and swallows twitter overhead. Keats indulges in the pathetic
fallacy to strike the melancholy note (the gnats are mourning!),
but as the song progresses the poet doesn’t project any further
emotions onto the choristers; they bleat, trill, whistle, and twitter,
as is their nature. It is getting late, and the prospect of decay is
everywhere, but its touch is light: “soft-dying day,” “bourne aloft / Or
sinking as the light wind lives or dies.” It’s hard not to notice,
after a few readings, that although the closing scene is imbued with a
sense of mortality, autumn’s song sounds much like spring’s. After all,
the birds and the lambs, although now “full-grown,” would have sung and
bleated in May as well. The four distinct seasons, with all their
sensuous variety, are one forward motion whose end is always death. We
may rely on it, and must rely on it; the harvest is our means of surviving the cold that follows.
- Caitlin Kimball
descensus Averno facilis est