The weather has been spectacular in western Connecticut this week. The leaves have started to turn and the late afternoons have that distinctive glow of autumn, but the temperature has been in the seventies. All these summer-like days reminded me of these lines: “Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.”

Unfortunately, these days will soon come to an end. In the meantime, I’m going to savor every warm, sunny day that comes my way.

To Autumn

John Keats

     1

Season of mist 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’er-brimmed their clammy cells.

     2

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-reaped furrow sound asleep,

     Drowsed 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 cider-press, with patient look,

         Though watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

     3

Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, 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 swallows, born aloft

         Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hill bourn;

     Hedge crickets sing; and now with treble soft

     The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

          And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Don’t forget to visit Dori at Dori Reads for the weekly round up. Happy Friday, everyone!