Ode · Nature
To Autumn
by John Keats · 1820
1I
2Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
3 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
4Conspiring with him how to load and bless
5 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
6To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
7 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
8 To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
9 With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
10And still more, later flowers for the bees,
11Until they think warm days will never cease,
12 For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
13II
14Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
15 Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
16Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
17 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
18Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
19 Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
20 Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
21And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
22 Steady thy laden head across a brook;
23 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
24 Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
25III
26Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
27 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, —
28While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
29 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
30Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
31 Among the river sallows, borne aloft
32 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
33And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
34 Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
35 The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
36 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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“To Autumn” by John Keats — quilloak.com/poems/to-autumn
Quick facts
- Poem
- To Autumn
- Poet
- John Keats
- Published
- 1820
- Length
- 36 lines
- Form
- Ode
- Themes
- Nature, Autumn
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 36 lines · 3 stanzas of 12 lines
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- John Keats1795–1821
- Source record
- PoetryDBTo Autumn by john-keats, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1820
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 f7c9ff10578d0c04…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.