Autumn Poems
Tragic Song
All still when summer is over
Stand shocks in the field,
Nothing left to whisper,
Not even good-bye, to the wind.
After summer was over
We knew winter would come:
We knew silence would wait,
Tall, patient calm.
And that cold this winter gray wolves
Deep in the North would cry
How summer that whispered all of us
At last whispers away.
- William Stafford
The goldenrod is yellow
The corn is turning brown
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down
From dewey lanes at morning
The grape’s sweet odors ride
At noon, the road’s a flutter
With yellow butterflies
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer
- Edwina Fallis
October turned my maple’s leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; here and there one lingers.
Soon these will slip from out the twig’s weak hold,
Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers.
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich
No sun-no moon!
No morn – no noon
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable ease in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, -
November!
- Thomas Hood
Magical prognosticator,
Chanting, canting, calculator,
Exorcist and necromancer,
Venificial, sabbat dancer,
Striga, arted and capricious,
Conjurer and maleficius
Tonight, how many witches fly?
How many brooms will sweep the sky?
- Felice Holman