To Autumn
by John Keats (1795-1821)

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-eaves 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 sometime 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.

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