DLTK's Poems
To Autumn
by 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,
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 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 red-breast whistles from a
garden-croft;
And
gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
