'Tis the Season: Autumnal Verses

Dark comes early now; leaves are drifting down in a steady shower, and the birds are leaving in hurried flight. The sun is losing her warmth, but windows glow with lamplight in the gloaming. It's a time of year that has inspired poets for centuries. Here are a few of my favorites that seem to touchthe autumn at its very core.

In slack wind of November

  The fog forms and shifts;

All the world comes out again

  When the fog lifts.

Loosened from their sapless twigs

  Leaves drop with every gust;

Drifting, rustling, out of sight

  In the damp or dust.

     --from A Year's Windfalls by Christina Rosetti

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

       --Fall, Leaves Fall by Emily Bronte

It is a storm-strid night, winds footing swift

Through the blind profound;

I know the happenings from their sound;

Leaves totter down still green, and spin and drift;

The tree-trunks rock to their roots, which wrench and lift

The loam where they run onward underground.

The streams are muddy and swollen; eels migrate

To a new abode;

Even cross, ‘tis said, the turnpike-road;

[Men’s feet have felt their crawl, home-coming late]:

The westward fronts of towers are saturate,

Church-timbers crack, and witches ride abroad.

            

       --Night-Time in Mid-Fall by Thomas Hardy

                                          Stay warm, all. 

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