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To Autumn And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly

By John Keats bourn;
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves
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.

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,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy
hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined
flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

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;
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Ode on a Grecian Urn A burning forehead, and a parching

By John Keats tongue.
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy And all her silken flanks with garlands
shape drest?
Of deities or mortals, or of both, What little town by river or sea shore,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
What men or gods are these? What maidens Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
loth? And, little town, thy streets for evermore
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
What pipes and timbrels? What wild Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
ecstasy?
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: thought
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; When old age shall this generation waste,
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; woe
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
bliss, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ye know on earth, and all ye need to
know.”
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and
cloy'd,
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Ode to a Nightingale Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin,

By John Keats and dies;
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Where but to think is to be full of
My sense, as though of hemlock I had sorrow
drunk, And leaden-eyed despairs,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had Or new Love pine at them beyond
sunk: to-morrow.
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,— Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
trees But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
In some melodious plot Though the dull brain perplexes and
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, retards:
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been throne,
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
Tasting of Flora and the country green, But here there is no light,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt Save what from heaven is with the breezes
mirth! blown
O for a beaker full of the warm South, Through verdurous glooms and
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, winding mossy ways.
With beaded bubbles winking at the
brim, I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
And purple-stained mouth; Nor what soft incense hangs upon the
That I might drink, and leave the world boughs,
unseen, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
And with thee fade away into the forest Wherewith the seasonable month endows
dim: The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget eglantine;
What thou among the leaves hast never Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
known, And mid-May's eldest child,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
Here, where men sit and hear each other The murmurous haunt of flies on
groan; summer eves.
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
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I have been half in love with easeful Death, To a Skylark

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, By Percy Bysshe Shelley
To take into the air my quiet breath; Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, Bird thou never wert,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, That from Heaven, or near it,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul Pourest thy full heart
abroad In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in Higher still and higher
vain— From the earth thou springest
To thy high requiem become a sod. Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever
No hungry generations tread thee down; singest.
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown: In the golden lightning
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Of the sunken sun,
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
for home, Thou dost float and run;
She stood in tears amid the alien corn; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the The pale purple even
foam Melts around thy flight;
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well Keen as are the arrows
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Of that silver sphere,
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Whose intense lamp narrows
Past the near meadows, over the still stream, In the white dawn clear
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
deep
In the next valley-glades: All the earth and air
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? With thy voice is loud,
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is
overflow'd.
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Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth

What thou art we know not; surpass.
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
Drops so bright to see What sweet thoughts are thine:
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
Like a Poet hidden That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden, Chorus Hymeneal,
Till the world is wrought Or triumphal chant,
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
Like a high-born maiden A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden
In a palace-tower, want.
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour What objects are the fountains
With music sweet as love, which overflows her Of thy happy strain?
bower: What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
Like a glow-worm golden What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of
In a dell of dew, pain?
Scattering unbeholden
Its aëreal hue With thy clear keen joyance
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it Languor cannot be:
from the view: Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Like a rose embower'd Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd, Waking or asleep,
Till the scent it gives Thou of death must deem
Makes faint with too much sweet those Things more true and deep
heavy-winged thieves: Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal
Sound of vernal showers stream?
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers, We look before and after,
All that ever was And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
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With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening
now.
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Autumn Sonnet II
Anna Letitia Barbauld Charlotte Smith
A FRAGMENT Written at the close of Spring.
Farewell the softer hours, Spring's opening blush THE garlands fade that Spring so lately wove,
And Summer's deeper glow, the shepherd's pipe Each simple flower, which she had nursed in
Tuned to the murmurs of a weeping spring, dew,
And song of birds, and gay enameled fields,— Anemonies, that spangled every grove,
Farewell! 'T is now the sickness of the year, The primrose wan, and hare-bell mildly blue.
Not to be medicined by the skillful hand. No more shall violets linger in the dell,
Pale suns arise that like weak kings behold Or purple orchis variegate the plain,
Their predecessor's empire moulder from them; Till Spring again shall call forth every bell,
While swift-increasing spreads the black And dress with humid hands her wreaths
domain again.—
Of melancholy Night;—no more content Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair,
With equal sway, her stretching shadows gain Are the fond visions of thy early day,
On the bright morn, and cloud the evening sky. Till tyrant passion and corrosive care
Farewell the careless lingering walk at eve, Bid all thy fairy colours fade away!
Sweet with the breath of kine and new-spread Another May new buds and flowers shall bring;
hay; Ah! why has happiness—no second spring?
And slumber on a bank, where the lulled youth,
His head on flowers, delicious languor feels
Creep in the blood. A different season now
Invites a different song. The naked trees
Admit the tempest; rent is Nature's robe;
Fast, fast, the blush of Summer fades away
From her wan cheek, and scarce a flower
remains
To deck her bosom; Winter follows close,
Pressing impatient on, and with rude breath
Fans her discoloured tresses. Yet not all
Of grace and beauty from the falling year
Is torn ungenial. Still the taper fir
Lifts its green spire, and the dark holly edged
With gold, and many a strong perennial plant,
Yet cheer the waste: nor does yon knot of oaks
Resign its honours to the infant blast.
This is the time, and these the solemn walks,
When inspiration rushes o'er the soul
Sudden, as through the grove the rustling breeze.
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The Voice Of Spring

Felicia Dorothea Hemans
I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.
I have breathed on the South, and the
chestnut-flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright, where my step has
been.
I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing
sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry
time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
From the streams and founts I have loosed the
chain;
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain
brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.