Poem: “To Autumn”, John Keats

Seasons of mist 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 sees 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, 

Drows’d 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 cyder-press, with patient look, 

Thou watchest the last oozings hour 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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.