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.
