My father taught me to appreciate old books. He had a huge library, contained along the walls of many rooms in our house. I think each of us 8 kids kept some of them when he died.
Here are three I keep out on a table because the look and feel of them gives me pleasure, and they are full of poems!
The one on top is about five inches long. It is a book of poems titled The Seasons: containing Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, by James Thomson, with the life of the author by Dr. Samuel Johnson. It was published in 1788.
The second with the Celtic embossing is The Shorter Poems of John Keats, and has no publication date.
The green book on the bottom of the pile is The Early Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, published in 1893.
Out of season, I want to post one of the most beautiful poems ever, from the second book: Keats' "To Autumn."
TO AUTUMN
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;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to 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.
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,
Drowsed with the fumes of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, 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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats, 1819
