Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,                                                        Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?                                                 Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;                                                        Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find                                                 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

Conspiring with him how to load and bless                                                    Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,                                                       While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;                                        Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind                                                 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,                                                Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,                                                      Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;                                                      Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook                                      Among the river sallows, borne aloft

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells                                              Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:                                          Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,                                                      And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep                                                 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

And still more, later flowers for the bees,                                                       Steady thy laden head across a brook;                                                           Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

Until they think warm days will never cease,                                                 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,                                                          The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

For summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.                                           Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.                                                                                                And

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   g         a        t        h        e        r        i        n        g

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        s w  a   l    l     o      w       s

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    t       w      i     t    t   e  r

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        in

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         t         h         e

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           s   k    i     e      s.