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 a 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 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