Season of mists and mellow
fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the
maturing sun;
ConspiringConspiring Working together; literally, to
conspire is “to breathe together” (OED) with him how to load and
bless
With fruit the vines that
round the thatch-evesthatch-eves
Thatch-eaves, the edge of thatched roofs 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
winnowingwinnowing Separating
the wheat from the chaff, the heavy from the light wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow
sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of
poppies, while thy hookhook Scythe
Spares the next swath
and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleanergleaner One who gathers the remaining food
after the reaper has harvested the field thou dost keep
Steady thy ladenladen Loaded down 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?Where are they?
Rhetorical convention known as ubi sunt, often appearing in poems
that meditate on the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of
death.
Think not of them, thou
hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloombloom “to colour with a soft warm tint or
glow” (OED) the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plainsstubble-plains
Fields made up of stubble, the remaining stumps of grain left after
reaping with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the
small gnats mourn
Among the river sallowssallows Willow trees, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light
wind loves or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud
bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and
now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles
from a garden-croftgarden-croft A
croft is a small enclosed field;
And gathering swallows
twitter in the skies.
~ John Keats ~
