Autumn...My Favorite Time of Year

To Autumn by John Keats (1795-1821)

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-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;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;         
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;  
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821 and was buried in the protestant cemetery in Rome. His last request was to be placed under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words, "Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, includes the epitaph:

"This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821"

He was 26 years old.