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 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 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-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-breat whistles from a garden-croft;

　　And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.