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1.
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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2.
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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3.
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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