Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
Music I love – but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine –
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes borne.
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an angel's voice,
To wake, and worship, and rejoice;
To greet with joy the glorious morn,
Which angels welcomed long ago,
When our redeeming Lord was born,
To bring the light of Heaven below;
The Powers of Darkness to dispel,
And rescue Earth from Death and Hell.
While listening to that sacred strain,
My raptured spirit soars on high;
I seem to hear those songs again
Resounding through the open sky,
That kindled such divine delight,
In those who watched their flocks by night.
With them, I celebrate His birth–
Glory to God, in highest Heaven,
Good-will to men, and peace on Earth,
To us a Saviour-king is given;
Our God is come to claim His own,
And Satan's power is overthrown!
A sinless God, for sinful men,
Descends to suffer and to bleed;
Hell must renounce its empire then;
The price is paid, the world is freed,
And Satan's self must now confess,
That Christ has earned a Right to bless:
Now holy Peace may smile from heaven,
And heavenly Truth from earth shall spring:
The captive's galling bonds are riven,
For our Redeemer is our king;
And He that gave his blood for men
Will lead us home to God again.
~~ Anne Brontë (1820-1849) from Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster For their far off flying From summer dying.
Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples’ dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing For sweet things dying.
~~ Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) from Poems, 1890
List! List! the sleigh bells peal across the snow;
The frost's sharp arrows touch the earth and lo!
How diamond-bright the stars to scintillate
When Night hath lit hr lamps to Heaven's gate.
To the dim forest's cloistered arches go,
And seek the holly and the mistletoe;
For soon the bells of Christmas-tide will ring
To hail the Heavenly King!
We have tested and tasted too much, lover –
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.
And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.
O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning –
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour –
And Christ comes with a January flower.
~~ Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) from A Soul for Sale, 1947
Yes, the Year is growing old, And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold, Plucks the old man by the beard, Sorely,— sorely!
The leaves are falling, falling, Solemnly and slow;
Caw! caw! the rooks are calling, It is a sound of woe, A sound of woe!
Through woods and mountain-passes The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses, Singing: Pray for this poor soul, Pray,— pray!
And the hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain,
And patter their doleful prayers;— But their prayers are all in vain, All in vain!
There he stands in the foul weather, The foolish, fond Old Year,
Crowned with wild flowers and with heather, Like weak, despised Lear, A king,— a king!
Then comes the summer-like day, Bids the old man rejoice!
His joy! his last! O, the old man gray Loveth that ever-soft voice, Gentle and low.
To the crimson woods he saith, And the voice gentle and low
Of the soft air, like a daughter's breath, Pray do not mock me so! Do not laugh at me!
And now the sweet day is dead; Cold in his arms it lies;
No stain from its breath is spread Over the glassy skies, No mist or stain!
Then, too, the Old Year dieth, And the forests utter a moan,
Like the voice of one who crieth In the wilderness alone, Vex not his ghost!
Then comes, with an awful roar, Gathering and sounding on,
The storm-wind from Labrador, The wind Euroclydon, The storm-wind!
Howl! howl! and from the forest Sweep the red leaves away!
Would, the sins that thou abhorrest, O Soul! could thus decay, And be swept away!
For there shall come a mightier blast, There shall be a darker day;
And the stars, from heaven down-cast Like red leaves be swept away! Kyrie, Eleyson! Christe, Eleyson!
~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) from Voices of the Night, 1839
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
~~
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
from Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1914
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
Winter cold is coming on;
No more calls the cuckoo:
No more doth the music gush
From the silver-throated thrush:
No more now at "evening pale,"
Singeth sad the nightingale;
Nor the blackbird on the lawn;
Nor the lark at dewy dawn:
Time hath wove' his songs anew.
No more young and dancing measures;
No more budding flowery pleasures:
All is over, — all forgot;
Save by me, who loved them not.
Winter white is coming on;
And I love his coming:
What, though winds the fields have shorn, —
What, though earth is half forlorn, —
Not a berry on the thorn, —
Not an insect humming;
Pleasure never can be dead;
Beauty cannot hide her head!
Look! in what fantastic showers,
The snow flings down her feathered flowers,
Or whirls about, in drunken glee,
Kissing its love, the holly tree.
Behold! the Sun himself comes forth,
And sends his beams from south to north, —
To diamonds turns the winter rime,
And lends a glory to the time!
Such days, — when old friends meet together,
Are worth a score of mere spring weather;
And hark ! the merry bells awake;
They clamor blithely for our sake!
The clock is sounding from the tower,
"Four" "five" - 'tis now - - 's dinner hour!
Come on, I see his table spread,
The sherry, the claret rosy red,
The champagne sparkling in the light,
By Bacchus! we'll be wise to-night.
The dull November days are here,
Days of wan skies and landscapes drear,
When through the forest far and near
Is heard the squirrel chattering clear, The partridge drumming low;
When all throughout the faded land,
Like alms from some swift, scornful hand
Toss'd to a wretched beggar band, The gold leaves downward blow.
Anon when moons are pale on high,
Encircled in a watery sky,
Is heard the loon's last lonely cry
From shores where silent shadows lie Dark-dyed in depths below;
And ever through the restless night,
Afar to left and far to right,
Like some unclean and cursed sprite, The owl flits to and fro.
But though the world is gray and lone,
The song-birds and the flowers flown;
Though on each writhing wind is blown
The dirge of summer overthrown, Man is not wholly bowed.
From some unguessed, unfathom'd spell,
He feels a joy he cannot tell;
Oh, in the wild night it is well One star is still allowed!
Thus, when our heads are bended low,
And Death, the tyrant, smites with woe,
Our souls may catch some mystic glow
To light the dismal way; for though We never quite may tell
Whence comes it to the bruised heart,
Its balm and healing to impart,
Yet always with the pang, the smart, There cometh peace as well.
We walk on starry fields of white And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day, Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives, And conquers if we let it.
There’s not a day in all the year But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold, Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise, Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time, A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
~~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) from Custer, and other poems, 1896
Some nomad yearning burns within my singing For that bleak beauty scorned of lute and lyre,
That loveliness of gray whereon are winging
The last wild lyrists of the marsh and mire.
And, lest that migrant choir
Should wing away all music from the land, By one forgotten lake I chant this song;
And that cold passion of her choric sand Shall to my muse belong.
This lake, unnamed in June, is still more nameless
Amid this ruined grandeur of the year,
These roofless, pillared temples where the tameless
Young Winter soon will chase her frosty spear;
And where even now I hear
The prelude of her long and ghostly wail
In boughs that creak and shallows that congeal,
And, like a child who hears some ghostly tale,
A strange delight I feel.
I saw the year pass by me like a dancer:
The imp of April and the child of May,
The modest maid of June with her soft answer
To every wooing wind that blew her way.
And now, this autumn day,
When the high rouge of leaf no more conceals
And there is none to pipe a dancing theme,
A woman old, with heavy toes and heels,
Plods by me in a dream.
Let others pour their opulence of roses
To please their high-born ladies of the tower;
Rather would I the thin, wan hand that closes
In grateful love about my simple flower.
While comrade singers shower
With wonderment of word and garish phrase
The luscious year, that moves from plough to plough,
I rest content to twine mine austere bays
About November’s brow.
Here, in this cheerless womb, is born the glory
Of June’s white-woven whorl of scented hours.
And here, within this mist supine and hoary,
Is dreamed the foot of April’s dancing showers.
Here, where the black leaf cowers
Against the dusky bosom of the earth,
Is drawn the milk that feeds the dawning year;
And Flora plans, herself, the rhythmic birth
Of spring’s new chorus here.
Above my nameless lake the broken fingers
Of those once-hardy reeds are jewelled with ice;
The mallard duck, despite this warning, lingers
Until the gripping air is like a vice.
The year hath tossed her dice
And lost the Indian summer, and the loon
Chills, with her wintry laughter, the bleak skies —
And, where a meagre sun is doled at noon,
A wounded pheasant dies.
And, lest these hueless days should pass despairing,
The rose hath garbed her seeds in orbs of red —
The last warm touch of pure, autumnal daring
In all this frosty garden of the dead.
The quail, to hardship bred,
Frames her soft eyes with tangled brush and brier,
And woos us with the contrast; and the hare,
Urged by the weasel’s probing eyes of fire,
Leaps from her peaceful lair.
This is the hour when the bold sun is sleeping
On his last couch — and here his lady comes,
Cold as a cloud that will not melt to weeping,
And breaks the flutes and muffles all the drums,
And the last warmth benumbs.
I know the road she walks to greet her lord
By the strange rustle of her silken dress;
Or do I hear the oak-tree’s phantom horde
Of dead leaves in distress?
O troubadours of spring! O bards of gladness,
Who in the scented gardens love to throng!
So loath are ye to sing the hour of sadness
When all the world is hungry for a song,
And nights are strange and long,
That I, in this pale hour, have called mine art
To hymn that beauty, scorned of pen and tongue;
For God Himself hath set my song apart
To praise His worlds unsung.
~~ Wilson MacDonald (1880-1967) from Out of the Wilderness, 1926 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Alone, forlorn, blown down autummal hills,
Floats sweetly solemn, fond and low,
One mournful-noted song that fills
The twilight, lonely grown with snow.
O shower of sound that more than Music seems,
O song that some vague sadness of farewell
Leaves crowned and warm with tears! — must all our dreams
Of deepest Beauty thus with Sorrow dwell?
~~ Arthur Stringer (1874-1950) from The Woman in the rain, and other poems, 1907
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
These fought in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case . . .
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . . .
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.
Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;
fortitude as never before
frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.
V
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
~~ Ezra Pound (1885-1972) from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, 1920
[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]
The leaves are sere,
The woods are drear,
The breeze that erst so merrily did play,
Naught giveth but a melancholy lay;
Yet life's great lessons do not fail
E'en in November's gale.
'Twas in mid autumn, and the woods were still. A brooding mist from out the marshlands lay Like age’s clammy hand upon the day,
Soddening it;— and the night rose dank and chill.
I watched the sere leaves falling, falling, till Old thoughts, old hopes, seemed fluttering too away, And then I sighed to think how life’s decay,
And change, and time’s mischances, Love might kill. Sudden a shadowy horseman, at full speed Spurring a pale horse, passed me swiftly by,
And mocking shrieked, “Thy love is dead indeed, Haste to the burial!”— With a bitter cry
I swooned, and wake to wonder at my creed, Learning from Death that Love can never die.
~~
Frank T. Marzials (1840-1912)
from Death's Disguises, and other sonnets, 1889
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am joking.
~~ Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) from Chicago Poems, 1916 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
October and the skies are cool and gray O'er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf, Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf.
The dignity of woods in rich decay Accords full well with this majestic grief
That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day, Whose afternoon is hush'd, and wintry brief.
Only a robin sings from any spray.
And night sends up her pale cold moon, and spills
White mist around the hollows of the hills, Phantoms of firth or lake; the peasant sees His cot and stackyard, with the homestead trees,
Islanded: but no foolish terror thrills His perfect harvesting; he sleeps at ease.
With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life’s newness, and earth’s garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.
There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves; the purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings;
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.
O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.
~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) from Voices of the Night, 1839
In the slant sunlight of the young October,
Dew-dashed lay meadow, upland, wood, and pool;
Mid-time delicious, when all hues are sober,
All sounds an undertone, all airs are cool:
When Nature seems awhile to pause and probe her,
Asking her heart if her eventful rule
Hath blest the earth she loveth, and to brace her
Against the wintry darksome days that face her.
~~
Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
from The Human Tragedy, 1891
The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes, And wild the clouded gleam.
The thistle now is older,
His stalk begins to moulder, His head is white as snow;
The branches all are barer,
The linnet's song is rarer, The robin pipeth now.
~~ Richard Watson Dixon (1833-1900) from Songs and Odes, 1896 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
Once on an autumn day as I reposed Beneath a noonbeam, pallid yet not dull, The branch above my head dipt itself full Of that white sunshine momently, and closed; While, ever and anon, the ashen keys Dropt down beside the tarnished hollyhocks, The scarlet cranesbill. and the faded stocks, Flung from the shuffling leafage by the breeze. How wistfully I marked the year's decay, Forecasting all the dreary wind and rain; 'Twas the last week the swallow would remain. How jealously I watched his circling play! A few brief hours, and he would dart away, No more to turn upon himself again.
~~ Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879) from Collected Sonnets, 1880 [Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
The mellow moon hangs golden in the sky,
The vintage song is over, far and nigh
A richer beauty Nature weareth now,
And silently in reverence we bow
Before the forest altars, off'ring praise
To Him who sweetness gives to all our days.
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood —
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
[...]
You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth
The soft vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth —
O love me truly!
II
You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,
As you were Saint Cupid’s nun,
And kept his weeks of Ember.
O love me truly!
III
You say you love; but then your lips
Coral tinted teach no blisses,
More than coral in the sea —
They never pout for kisses —
O love me truly!
IV
You say you love; but then your hand
No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth;
It is like a statue’s, dead, —
While mine for passion burneth —
O love me truly!
V
O breathe a word or two of fire!
Smile, as if those words should burn me,
Squeeze as lovers should — O kiss
And in thy heart inurn me!
O love me truly!
There's a something in the atmosphere, in sweet September days,
That mantles all the landscape with its languid, dreamy haze;
And you see the leaves a-dropping, in a lazy kind of way,
Where the maple trees are standing in their Summer-time array.
II
There's a yellowish tinge a-creeping over Nature's emerald sheen,
And the cattle stand, half-sleeping, in the middle of the stream
Where the glassy pool is shaded by the overhanging limb,
And the pebbly bottom's glinting where the silvery minnows swim.
III
The tasseled corn is nodding, and the crow on drowsy wing
Is sailing o'er the orchard where the ripening apples swing,
And the fleecy clouds are floating in the azure of the sky,
And the gentle breeze is sighing as it's idly wafted by.
IV
The cantaloupes are ripening in their yellow golden rinds;
And the melons, round and juicy, are a-clinging to the vines;
And the merry, laughing children, in their happy hour of play,
Are a-romping in the meadow and a-sliding down the hay.
V
The busy bees are buzzing where the grapes with purple blush,
And the hanging bunches tempting with their weight the arbor crush,
And the blue jays are a-wrangling in the wood across the road,
Where the hickory boughs are bending 'neath an extra heavy load.
VI
Let your poets keep a-singing about the Springtime gay,
And the blossoms and the flowers in the merry month of May —
But the early Autumn splendor, with its sweet September days,
Eclipses boasted Springtime in a thousand kind of ways!
~~
George W. Doneghy (1848-1917)
from The Old Hanging Fork, and other poems, 1897
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