Saturday Poetry Corner: To Autumn

 

 

 

 

"You crown the year with Your bounty, and Your paths overflow with plenty."
(Psalm 65:11)

 

Autumn In The English Countryside
Image courtesy/Pinterest

   

Season of mist 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 the cottage-trees,

And with 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 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 and dies; 

And full-grown lambs bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

 

"To Autumn"
(1819)
John Keats
(1795-1821)
English Romantic poet