To Autumn - John Keats, 1795 - 1821

To Autumn

John Keats

 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-brimm’d 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 fume 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.