With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.
`The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.
`The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
Autumn departs in the final line, leaving his
surplus: the harvest, the beautiful sights, sounds, and smells of autumn, and
his poetry.
Autumn is an ever-present absence, the tokens of
something fleeting, something evermore about to be, and its omnipresence spills
out into our experience in ways that no human form can fully capture, not even
the "fresh pipe" of a skilled poet (though no doubt such a
"pipe" will have no end of activity in celebrating the
"lusty" song Autumn leaves in his wake). Unlike the other season
poems, there are no other humans: the speaker makes no mention of
"we" or "our" as he does in the first two season poems.
There are only the "daughters of the year." All is fading now,
including the speaker, who will be left alone with Winter in "To
Winter." But what remains is a "golden load."
It's difficult to read this poem and not think of
James Joyce reading it, giggling at the phrase "golden load": his HCE
in Finnegans Wake also departs and leaves in his wake a "golden
load" for the rest of us. And quite aside from any scatalogical jokes we
may want to make, this "load" is also the cosmic egg, the nourishing
breakfast left for us, all the horses, by the fall of a cosmic humpty dumpty,
"iggs for the brekkers come to mourn-him, sunny side up with care."
If what he has left behind is a "golden
load," it might well be that Blake is -- like Joyce -- referencing the
felix culpa, the "fortunate fall," the Christian view that the fall
was a good thing, for it necessitated the greater good of redemption. Or, to
paraphrase St. Paul, sin boldly, for it will elicit even greater mercy from
God. Or, to put it into Thelemic terms, our "fall" into individual
consciousness necessitates the greater good (and the greater enjoyment and
fulfillment) of our union with Nuit through our union with the Khabs, the True
Self, the True Inclinations.
There’s a lot that could be said here about the
radical political implications of Blake’s subversion of poetic form (this was
written at the beginning of his career as a poet, long before he *really* began
exploding poetic form, as he would in the 1790s and especially the 1800s: the
child is the father of the man, as always). There’s also a lot to say about the
sexuality of this poem in its eighteenth-century context. And there’s also,
aside from the Garden of Eden stuff, an echo of Milton’s Lycidas in the third stanza.
A lot going on, as always with Blake.
Happy Fall.
(Get it? Happy Fall?)