To Autumn

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-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.

Sonnet to Sleep

Sonnet to Sleep
John Keats

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
   Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
   Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
   In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws
   Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
   Upon my pillow, breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
   Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
   And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

soothest = softest
curious = scrupulous
wards = the ridges in a lock that correspond to a key