Glowing Canvas
Mild autumn fields look turned to warmth by plough
And sun as if a hazel-colored scene
Were caught by some new Constable who now
Arises in burnt orange, blond and green—
While nutshell brown comes, from a brush which toils
As newer Turners might, if they made fields
Of loam and stubble set by trees in oils
With truer hues than even nature yields.
Then later afternoons begin to bless
October chills with blankets made of slight
Flame, shaded comforters of dew that dress
The broken cornstalks in their toned bronze light.
The autumn is an artist with a gloss
Of genius sanctifying ochre loss.
‘Somehow a stubble plain looks warm—in the same way that some pictures look warm’ ~ John Keats, letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, September 21, quoted in Keats by Andrew Motion, pp. 457 and 461.