To Autumn

¹Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

²Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

³Conspiring with him how to load and bless

⁴With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

⁵To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

⁶And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

⁷To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

⁸With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

⁹And still more, later flowers for the bees,

¹⁰Until they think warm days will never cease,

¹¹For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

¹²Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

¹³Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

¹⁴Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

¹⁵Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

¹⁶Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

¹⁷Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

¹⁸Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

¹⁹And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

²⁰Steady thy laden head across a brook;

²¹Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

²²Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

²³Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

²⁴Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, —

²⁵While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

²⁶And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

²⁷Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

²⁸Among the river sallows, borne aloft

²⁹Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

³⁰And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

³¹Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

³²The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

³³And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.