Keats walked through the fields near Winchester and wrote this ode about the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. It was September 1819; he had sixteen months to live. The poem has no argument, no dramatic tension, only the sensuous accumulation of autumn's riches. The soft-dying day; the small gnats mourning; the full-grown lambs; the swallows gathering. Keats achieves something like pure description, yet the knowledge of approaching winter haunts every line. The poem is often called perfect. It is almost unbearably beautiful. The songs of spring are elsewhere. This is enough.