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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
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Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
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Conspiring with him how to load and bless
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With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
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To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
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And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
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To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
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With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
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And still more, later flowers for the bees,
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Until they think warm days will never cease,
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For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
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Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
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Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
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Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
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Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
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Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
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Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
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Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
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And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
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Steady thy laden head across a brook;
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Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
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Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
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Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
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Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
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While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
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And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
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Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
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Among the river sallows, borne aloft
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Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
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And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
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Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
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The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
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And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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