Audiobook · read by volunteers
Ode to Autumn
John Keats (1795–1821)
Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010), Clarica, Délibáb, Denny Sayers (d. 2015), Elanor, Ernst Schnell, Glamour Diva, JemmaBlythe, Jc Guan, James Gladwin · 15 chapters · 35 min
About the book
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness: John Keats's ode To Autumn is one of the most loved poems in English, a celebration of the harvest season in three stanzas of rich, musical description. Apples ripen, gourds swell, the last bees hum and the light grows soft. Keats wrote it in 1819, after an autumn walk near Winchester, and he died less than two years later, aged twenty-five. The poem moves with calm assurance from the abundance of the morning to the quiet of the evening. Fifteen recordings by LibriVox volunteers are gathered here, so you can hear how voice and pace change the mood of the same lines. Each version is short, and the whole collection lasts about half an hour. A lovely companion for an autumn walk or a quiet moment.
Introduction
John Keats, who lived from 1795 to 1821, was an English Romantic poet who died at the age of twenty-five. In a few years he produced a body of poetry that is now counted among the finest in the language, including a number of great odes written in 1819. Ode to Autumn, composed that year, is among the best loved of them and the last of the great odes that he completed.
The poem has three stanzas, each of eleven lines. The first describes the ripening of fruit and the abundance of the season, the second shows autumn in the person of a figure at work in the fields, and the third turns to the songs of autumn and the sounds of evening. It is remarkable for the sensuous precision of its images and for the way it accepts the passing of the year without bitterness. Many readers have found in it a calm acceptance of change that is unusual in the poet’s work.
This recording is part of the weekly poetry project run by LibriVox volunteers. Each week a short poem is chosen, and many readers record it independently, so there is no single performance. Fifteen versions are collected here, each labelled with the reader’s initials, and each reader brings a different pace and emphasis.
Listening to several in a row is a pleasure and a lesson in how much a reader can bring to a poem. It is worth hearing today for the beauty of Keats’s language, and as an invitation to compare interpretations of a text that rewards many hearings.
Public domain
John Keats died in 1821: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text