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Saturday, October 3, 2015

Autumn / Gladys Cromwell


Autumn

Capricious little poem and sapling rhyme
Grew on the golden hillside of my youth.
The stanzas were as crooked and uncouth
As early things are wont to be. For time
Was pressing and mid-summer's glowing prime
Was ever imminent. Mysterious truth
Was the warm soil thought sprouted from.
     Forsooth
My songs were stem and filament to climb.
But now, the memory of bud and fruit
And flower is weariness. This present week
In mid-September, wayward wild pursuit
Is over; youth fulfilled. How shall they seek
Beyond, unless from sunbeams in the skies
These listless leaves take warmer harmonies?

~~
Gladys Cromwell (1885-1919)
from The Gates of Utterance, and other poems, 1915

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gladys Cromwell biography

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