John Keats, born in October 1795 in London, was a prominent English Romantic Poet. He was a contemporary to Lord Byron and Percy Byssye Shelley. His significant works include the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, and renowned odes such as Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Autumn, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode to Psyche. He also penned two famous poems based on Greek mythology Endemyion and Hyperion. The poet succumbed to tuberculosis at a young age of twenty five years.
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.
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 flower:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-presss, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of springs? 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, bourne aloft
Or sinking as a light wind lives or dies;
And full-green 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.
−John Keats
Match the words from the poem in column A with those in column B.
| Column A | Column B |
| 1. gleaner | a. apple trees |
| 2. granary floor | b. sweet kernel |
| 3. cyder-press | c. wailful choir |
| 4. autumn -sun | d. garden croft |
| 5. cottage | e. hilly bourn |
| 6. hazel shells | f. winnowing wind |
| 7. swallows | g. laden head |
| 8. gnats | h. twitter |
| 9. lambs | i. oozings |
| 10. red breast robin | j. bosom friends |
Which people does the poet describe in the second stanza of the poem?