Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
III. The SeasonsTo Autumn
John Keats (17951821)S
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’er-brimmed their clammy cells.
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 twinèd flowers;
And sometime 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.
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.