The long brown fields--no longer drear and dull-- Burn with the glow of these deep-hearted hours. Until the dry weeds seem more beautiful, More spiritlike than even summer's flowers.
But yesterday the world was stricken bare, Left old and dead in gray, enshrouding gloom; To-day what vivid wonder of the air Awakes the soul of vanished light and bloom?
Sharp with the clean, fine ecstasy of death, A mightier wind shall strike the shrinking earth, An exhalation of creative breath Wake the white wonder of the winter's birth.
In her wide Pantheon--her temple place-- Wrapped in strange beauty and new comforting, We shall not miss the Summer's full-blown grace, Nor hunger for the swift, exquisite Spring.
When late in summer the streams run yellow, Burst the bridges and spread into bays; When berries are black and peaches are mellow, And hills are hidden by rainy haze;
When the goldenrod is golden still, But the heart of the sunflower is darker and sadder; When the corn is in stacks on the slope of the hill, And slides o'er the path the striped adder;
When butterflies flutter from clover to thicket, Or wave their wings on the drooping leaf; When the breeze comes shrill with the call of the cricket, Grasshopper's rasp, and rustle of sheaf;
When high in the field the fern-leaves wrinkle, And brown is the grass where the mowers have mown; When low in the meadow the cow-bells tinkle, And small brooks crinkle o'er stock and stone;
When heavy and hollow the robin's whistle And shadows are deep in the heat of noon; When the air is white with the down o' the thistle, And the sky is red with the harvest moon;
O, then be chary, young Robert and Mary, No time let slip, not a moment wait! If the fiddle would play it must stop its tuning; And they who would wed must be done with their mooning; So let the churn rattle, see well to the cattle, And pile the wood by the barn-yard gate!
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 mossed 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'erbrimmed their clammy cells.