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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 twined 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.
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