To Autumn by John Keats, read by Nicholas Shaw for the BBC.
A man 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-eaves run,
to bend with apples the most 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'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy stall?
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
a fume of poppies, while thy hook spares the next swath and all its twine-ed flowers.
And sometimes like a gleener thou dost keep steady thy laden head across a brook, or by
a cider-press, with patient look, thou watchest the last oozing hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring?
Aye, 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 solos, borne aloft or sinking as the light wind lives or dies, and full-grown
lambs loud bleat from hilly brawn, heads cricket sing, and now with treble soft the red-breast
whistles from a garden-croft, when the gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
