John
Keats (1795-1821)
Ode to Autumn
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.
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