Autumn

Autumn in the Ashburton Domain

I think John Keats says it best:

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-eves 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 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 cyder-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 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-croft;

        And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.