Chapter XVII: Book IV: Autumn

"Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them; _thou_ hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the softly dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river shallows, 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 redbreast whistles from a garden croft,
And gathering swallows twitter from the skies."

--KEATS.

* * * * *

"It was a fair and mild autumnal sky,
And earth's ripe pleasures met the admiring eye,
As a rich beauty, when her bloom is lost,
Appears with more magnificence and cost."

--CRABBE.