| 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 mossed 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’erbrimmed 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-reaped furrow sound asleep, |
| Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook |
| Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers; |
| And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep |
| Steady thy laden head across a brook; |
| 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, |
| 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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; |
| And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. |
