TO AUTUMN

The lanes are painted this year with beautifully coloured trees and leaves. My thoughts at this time always turn to the well know poem Ode to Autumn by John Keats

Season 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 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 stil more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o'er brimmed 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 llifted by the winnowing wind,

Or one half reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed 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 swallows, 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 redbrest whistles from a garden croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.