To Autumn
by John Keats (1819)

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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-eaves run; 
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,             5
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,                10
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;  separating      15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow* sound asleep,         lines in a field
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath* and all its twined flowers:    cut grass
And sometimes like a gleaner* thou dost keep         gatherer
Steady thy laden* head across a brook;     burdened          20
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,             25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 
Then in a wailful* choir the small gnats mourn         very sad
Among the river sallows*, borne aloft                        willows
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn*;         30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft         boundary
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft*;  small enclosed field 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.