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 good 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 swathe and all its twineth 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 softly dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue.
Then,
In a wailful choir,
The small gnats mourn Among the river shallows,
Born aloft or sinking,
As the light wind lives or dies.
And full-grown lambs,
Loud bleat from hilly-born,
Heads cricket sing,
And now,
With treble soft,
The red breast whistles from a garden croft,
And gathering swallows Twitter in the skies.
