John Keats: Collected Lyrics
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Public-domain lyrics

To Autumn

John Keats

“To Autumn” as printed in The Poetical Works of John Keats (1884).

John Keats: Collected Lyrics Text 55 1884 · historical text
Public domainSong lyricsRomantic
Complete public-domain lyrics

This text comes from The Poetical Works of John Keats, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.

Verse 1

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 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.

Verse 2

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,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometime 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.

Verse 3

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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Credits

Written by John Keats

Words by John Keats. Historical text published in The Poetical Works of John Keats (1884); public domain. No claim to a modern recording or arrangement.

Source & text edition

The Poetical Works of John Keats (1884), “To Autumn”

Every text in this 1884 collected edition is by John Keats (1795-1821), who died more than 200 years ago, so the text is in the public domain worldwide; the edition carries a Wikisource PD-old determination.

How to read this historical text and its source

Read the source on Wikisource

View copyright evidence · Transcription terms (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Retrieved 2026-10-27. Line spacing and section labels are adapted for reading. The displayed text follows the linked edition. Editorial notes and abstract artwork are by 52lyrics.
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