Dear Readers, I am in a very autumnal state of mind, and so I thought I’d share a couple of autumn poems with you. These were new to me, so I hope you enjoy them too. This first is by Mary Oliver (of course)
An avenue of Raywood ashes in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery
And how about this one, by Maggie Smith? The last line really got me.
First Fall
I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
morning streets, I point and name.
Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
rusting and crisping at the edges.
I walk through Schiller Park with you
on my chest. Stars smolder well
into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,
the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.
Fall is when the only things you know
because I’ve named them
begin to end. Soon I’ll have another
season to offer you: frost soft
on the window and a porthole
sighed there, ice sleeving the bare
gray branches. The first time you see
something die, you won’t know it might
come back. I’m desperate for you
to love the world because I brought you here.
And finally, this one, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. There is such tenderness about it.
Spring and Fall, by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Do you have a favourite autumn poem? Do share!
To Autumn – 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,
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,
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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
You know, I knew the first few lines of this poem, but there are such lovely things in it – I love the ‘hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind’,
It is one of my favourites 🙂
God’s World
by Edna St Vincent Millay
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
I love Edna St Vincent Millay. I was in Canada for the fall one year, and it really was almost too beautiful to bear….
and another American poet, from the same era as Millay.
September Midnight
by Sara Teasdale
Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.
Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.
Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.
‘The passionless chant of insects’…..how lovely this is, thank you! I feel another autumn post coming on….
I knew you’d like the insect bit! I do too.
Last year I gave a friend of a weekly ‘gift’ of a poem a week for her birthday. I’m sure it was a comfort to us both through that long year. Anyway here are a few of the ones I send to her during the autumn months. I hope you enjoy them too and many thanks for your blog which I only discovered as I was working on her ‘birthday present’.
October by Jean Sprackland
Skies, big skies, careening over in the wind
great shoals of cloud pitching and jostling
in their rush to be anywhere other than here
You hesitate on your doorstep, glance up
and something tugs in your chest, rips free like a leaf
and is sucked up and away. Everything’s
finished here: raw-boned sycamores,
fields scalped and sodden. The houses are shut
and dustbins roll in their own filth in the street
So you would take your chances, risk it all…
You stand for a moment with the keys in your hand
Feeling the hard pull of the sky and the moment passing
http://bifurcatabifurcaria.blogspot.com/2013/10/october-by-jean-sprackland.html
Late October by Maya Angelou
Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in
cobweb greys and turn
to black
for comfort.
Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order to begin
again.
http://myseatonthebeach.blogspot.com/2009/10/late-october-poem-by-maya-angelou.html
Weeping Ash by Ann Pilling 2020
It died quietly in the night. If there were death throes
the gale swallowed them; and it fell with care
sideways on to a holly tree which soon bounced back,
we can see the hills now and we have more light.
I will miss all of it, its witchy branches, its long hair,
its stubborn refusal to leaf until spring
had all but passed into summer. Only then
did its long black fingernails unfurl to green.
The logs, stacked up in chequered rows against a wall,
will last several winters. Ash burns well.
In the dark months we can pull up close,
warm our hands at its flame
as those we have loved warm
us when we remember them.
http://www.annpilling.co.uk/commended-poems/22-weeping-ash
Oh my goodness, that last one about the weeping ash!!
And the Jean Sprackland!
I am definitely doing a second autumn poems post, there are some fantastic poems here and in the comments from sllgatsby and Anne…..
What a lovely gift for your friend.
Very moving poems all and some new discoveries among the old favourites. Here is a haiku I wrote about autumn
the swish of the broom
sweeping fallen leaves~
the light fades
And I can’t resist sending one more
even someone
free of passion as myself
feels sorrow:
snipe rising from a marsh
at evening in autumn
Saigyo
Beautiful! Thanks to you and your other commenters for sharing some beautiful poems.