Autumn Days / Jones Very

Autumn Days

The winds are out with loud increasing shout,
    Where late before them walked the biting frost,
Whirling the leaves in their wild sport about,
    And twig and limb athwart our path are tost.
But still the sun looks kindly on the year,
    And days of summer warmth will linger yet;
And still the birds amid the fields we hear,
    For the ripe grain and scattered seeds they get.
The shortening days grow slowly less and less,
    And winter comes with many a warning on;
And still some day with kindly smile will bless,
    Till the last hope's deceit is fledged and gone,
Before the deepening snows block up the way,
And the sweet fields are made of howling blasts the prey.

~~
Jones Very (1813-1880)
from Poems, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Jones Very biography

Dori, Trees in the Wind, November 2007. CC BY-SA 3,0, Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn / John Clare

Autumn

          1
I love the fitfull gusts that shakes
 The casement all the day
And from the mossy elm tree takes
 The faded leaf away
Twirling it by the window-pane
With thousand others down the lane

      2
I love to see the shaking twig
 Dance till the shut of eve
The sparrow on the cottage rig
 Whose chirp would make believe
That spring was just now flirting by
In summers lap with flowers to lie

      3
I love to see the cottage smoke
 Curl upwards through the naked trees
The pigeons nestled round the coat
 On dull November days like these
The cock upon the dung-hill crowing
The mill sails on the heath agoing

      4
The feather from the ravens breast
 Falls on the stubble lea
The acorns near the old crows nest
 Fall pattering down the tree
The grunting pigs that wait for all
Scramble and hurry where they fall

~~
John Clare (1793-1864)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Clare biography

"Autumn (I Love the Fitful Gusts)" read by Shanid. Courtesy Everyday - Poetry.

November / Maurice Thompson

November

A hint of slumber in the wind,
    A dreamful stir of blades and stalks,
As tenderly the twilight flows
    Down all my garden walks.

My robes of work are thrown aside,
    The odor of the grass is sweet;
The pleasure of a day well spent
    Bathes me from head to feet.

Calmly I wait the dreary change,—
    The season cutting sharp and sheer
Through the wan bowers of death that fringe
    The border of the year.

And while I muse, the fated earth
    Into a colder current dips,—
Feels winter's scourge with summer's kiss
    Still warm upon her lips.

~~ 

Maurice Thompson (1844-1901)
from Poems, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Maurice Thompson biography

Carlos Honda, Suzuka Flower Park, November 2013. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

A November Grave / James B. Kenyon

A November Grave

The grey clouds gather, fold on fold,
Above the blurred and dripping wold;
The light is growing pale and cold,
    And ghostly mists steal o'er the plain.

A robin in the elm is crying;
About the eaves the wind is sighing;
O dismal day! my heart is lying
    In yon fresh grave drenched with the rain.

~~
James B. Kenyon (1858-1924)
from At the Gate of Dreams, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James B. Kenyon biography

Dave Hitchborne, Gravestone, St. Andrew's graveyard, Miningsby, 2007. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

There's Nothing Like the Sun / Edward Thomas

There's Nothing Like the Sun

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountain side or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning's storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,
Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,
Or January's, or February's, great days:
And August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said –
Or, if I could live long enough, should say –
'There's nothing like the sun that shines today.'
There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Poems, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Thomas biography 

 "There's Nothing Like the Sun" read by John Snelling. Courtesy John Snelling.

Leaf-Fall in October / John Freeman

Leaf-Fall in October

O falling leaves,
O'er you compassionate tender-fingered eves
Draw a white mist for shroud, O falling leaves!

The poignant thrush
Singeth your fall, while careless footsteps crush
And pass unheeding you, wind-stricken leaves;

And from the sky
Sun, moon, and stars look on indifferently,
As you had never lived, O dying leaves!

A teasing wind
Rattles among the branches hourly-thinned,
Driving a fugitive army of you, wild leaves;

And no more now
Shall you like jewels hang on every bough
In th' bright dew-nourished morn, O pallid leaves

But the wise Earth,
In whom all present death is promised birth,
Takes you — and us who fall like you, O leaves!

~~
John Freeman (1880-1929)
from Twenty Poems, 1909

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

John Freeman biography

John Fowler, Falling Leaves, 2012. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

October / Tom MacInnes

October

When I was a little fellow, long ago,
    The season of all seasons seemed to me
    The Summer's afterglow and fantasy —
The red October of Ontario:
To ramble unrestrain'd where maples grow
    Thick-set with butternut and hickory,
    And be the while companion'd airily
By elfin things a child alone may know!

And how with mugs of cider, sweet and mellow,
    And block and hammer for the gather'd store
    Of toothsome nuts, we'd lie around before
The fire at nights, and hear the old folks tell o'
    Red Indians and bears, and the Yankee war —
Long ago, when I was a little fellow!

~~
Tom MacInnes (1867-1951)
from In Amber Lands, 1910

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

Tom MacInnes biography

Robert Berdan, Oxtongue River, Ontario, Canada, in autumn (detail).

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Suspending Winter Willingly in Disbelief / Cathleen Harvea Guthrie

 

Suspending Winter Willingly in Disbelief

Spring whistled a happy tune ... summer sang.
    Autumn's song being sung and winter's song
    Yet to come ... a cold hard song ... far too long, 
Winter's known song ... a frosty frigid ... pang!

The end of summer comes in disbelief:
    Autumnal apples fall far from the trees;
    Sweet honey stolen from the honeybees;
Luscious fruit with sweetness lends some relief.

The gifts of spring and summer ... love bestowed.
    Gratitude for the fruits of the season –
    Gratitude for plentiful pleasing reason.
From the summer season much bounty flowed.

Seen on display, the farmer's market showed
    The fresh fruits of love's organic labor.
    A just picked garden carrot ... to savor!
To buy artisanal produce much is owed.

Spring whistled a happy tune ... summer sang.
    Autumn's song being sung and winter's song
    Yet to come ... a cold hard song ... far too long,
Winter's known song ... a frosty frigid ... pang!

Cold hard fact:
    As fleeting pleasures fade in disbelief ...
    Suspension of disbelief assuages grief.

~~
Cathleen Harvea Guthrie, 2025 

from #autumnalpoemsbycathleenharveaguthrie 

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), Apple Gatherers, ca, 1859. Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn / Richard Chenevix Trench

from The Seasons

Autumn

Thine, autumn, is unwelcome lore,
To tell the world its pomp is o'er.

To whisper in the rose's ear
That all her beauty is no more;

And bid her own the faith how vain,
Which spring to her so lately swore.

 
A queen deposed, she quits her state;
The nightingales her fall deplore.

The hundred-voiced bird may woo
The thousand-leaved flower no more.

The jasmine sinks its head in shame,
The sharp east wind its tresses tore,

And robbed in passing cruelly
The tulip of the crown it wore.

The lily's sword is broken now,
That was so bright and keen before;

And not a blast can blow, but strews
With leaf of gold the earth's dank floor,

The piping winds sing Nature's dirge,
As through the forest bleak they roar,

Whose leafy screen, like locks of eld,
Each day shows scantier than before.

Thou fadest as a flower, O man!
Of food for musing here is store.

O man, thou fallest as a leaf!
Pace thoughtfully earth's leafstrewn floor;

Welcome the sadness of the time,
And lay to heart this natural lore.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

"The Seasons" by Trench, read by Sonia for LibriVox. Courtesy Rhodoclassics.

("Autumn" begins at 4:15.)

September / Madison Cawein

September

The bubbled blue of morning-glory spires,
    Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows
    Of clematis, through which September goes,
Song-hearted, rich in realized desires,
Are flanked by hotter hues: by tawny fires
    Of acrid marigolds,--that light long rows
    Of lamps,--and salvias, red as day's red close,--
That torches seem,--by which the Month attires
Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen,
    Towering imperial in her two-fold crown
    Of harvest and of vintage; all her form
Majestic gold and purple: in her mien
    The might of motherhood; her baby brown,
    Abundance, high on one exultant arm.

~~

Madison Cawein (1865-1914)
from Weeds by the Wall, 1901

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Madison Cawein biography

"September" read for LibriVox.org. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

Summer Past / John Gray

Summer Past

    (To Oscar Wilde)

    There was the summer. There
    Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
    And dripping amber sweat.
            O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
            In ecstasy.

    Fruit of a quest, despair.
    Smart of a sullen wrong.
    Where may they hide them yet?
            One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see the naiads' floating hair, caressed
            By fragrant sun-

    Beams. Softly lulled the eves
    The song-tired birds to sleep,
    That other things might tell
            Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves.
Deep in what hollow do the stern gods keep
Their bitter silence? By what listening well
            Where holy trees,

Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
            Of restless green?

~~

John Gray (1866-1934)
from Silverpoints, 1893

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

John Gray biography

 Silverpoints read for LibriVox.org. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

("Summer Past" begins at 13:12)

September / Michael Field

September

But why is Nature at such heavy pause,
And the earth slowly ceasing to revolve?
Only the lapping tides abide their laws,
And very softly on the sand dissolve.
The fruit is gathered – not an apple drops:
In little mists above the garden bed
The petals of the last gold dahlia shed;
The spider central 'mid his wreathed dewdrops!
Oh still, oh quiet!– and no issue found;
No laying up to rest of callow things,
Or scale, or sheaf, or tissue of armed wings:
Open the tilth, open the fallow ground!
The fragrance of the air that has no home
Spreads vague and dissolute, nor cares to roam.

~~
Michael Field

from Wild Honey from Various Thyme, 1908

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography

    Txlixt Txlix T, Nature Reserve De Muy, September 2010. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Before the Snow / George Parsons Lathrop

Before the Snow

Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
    Shatters the rainy wind. A myriad leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air.
    Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.

Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill,
    Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed,
My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still,
    By thronging fancies wild and wistful led.

Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago
    The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain!
How soon death settles on us, and the snow
    Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain!

Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood
    Of that which makes moods dear,— some shoot of spring
Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood
    We walked in,— memory's rare environing.

And, though they die, the seasons only take
    A ruined substance. All that's best remains
In the essential vision that can make
    One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains.

~~
George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898)
from Dreams and Days, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Parsons Lathrop biography

Tom Thompson (1877-1917), Autumn Birches, 1916. Wikimedia Commons.

Design for November / William Carlos Williams

Design for November

Joseph Vernet (1714-1789),

The Four Times of Day: Midday, 1757 

(detail). Wikimedia Commons.

Let confusion be the design
and all my thoughts go,
swallowed by desire: recess
from promises in
the November of your arms.
Release from the rose: broken
reeds, strawpale,
through which, from easy
branches that mock the blood
a few leaves fall. There
the mind is cradled,
stripped also and returned
to the ground, a trivial
and momentary clatter. Sleep
and be brought down and so
condone the world, eased of
the jagged sky and all
its petty imageries, flying
birds, its fogs and windy
phalanxes . . .

~~
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
from Collected Later Poems, 1944

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

William Carlos Williams biography

November in the City / Edith Wyatt

November in the City

    I

Tonight the rain blows down from misty places
Above the roof-tops where the pigeons fly:
And quick the steps; intent, the city's faces
That say that we must hurry — you and I.
Oh, why ? So much speeds through this twilight rain-time,
That's not worth keeping up with. By-and-by
We'll wonder why we always knew the traintime,
And yet knew not November — you and I.

    II

In quiet let us hark. Not till we listen
Shall any song arise for you and me;
Nor ever this broad-stippling music glisten
Twice-told at twilight down the city sea.
The fog-horns call. The lake-winds rush. Just lately
I watched the city lights bloom star on star
Along the streets : and terrace-spaced and stately
Touch moated height and coronet afar.
November's winds blow towards the garnered grain-land.
Blue-buoyed all the shepherd whistles bay:
And flocking down Chicago's dusk-barred main land
The steam and fog-fleeced mists run, buff and gray.
Silence and sound. Wide echoes. Rain-dropped spaces.
Deep-rumbling dray and dipping trolley car.
Steps multitudinous and countless faces.
Along the cloudy street, lit star on star.

    III

Oh, had you thought that only woods and oceans
Were meant to speak the truth to you and me —
That only tides' and stars' immortal motions
Said we are part of all eternity?
The rains that fall and fly in silver tangent,
The passing steps, the fogs that die and live,
These chords that pale and darken, hushed and plangent
Sing proud the praise of splendors fugitive.
For fleet-pulsed mists, and mortal steps and faces
More move me than the tides that know no years —
And music blown from rain-swept human places
More stirs me than the stars untouched with tears.
I think that such a night as this has never
Sung argent here before: and not again
With all these tall-roofed intervals that sever
These streets and corners, etched with lamp-lit rain
Tell just this cool-thrilled tale of Midland spaces
And lake-born mists, that black-lined building's prow
That cuts the steam, this dream in peopled places
That sings its deep-breathed beauty here and now.

    IV

November winds wing towards the garnered grain-land.
The city lights have risen. Proud and free,
Far music swinging down the dusk-barred main land
Cries we are part of all eternity.
Let tne remember, let me rise and sing it!
For others may the mountains be the sign,
Sun, stars, the wooded earth, the seas that ring it,
Of melody immortal. Here is mine.
This night when rain blows down through Midland spaces
And lake-born mists. A black-lined building's prow
That cuts the steam. A dream in peopled places
That sings its deep-breathed beauty here and now.

~~

Edith Wyatt (1873-1958)

from The Wind in the Corn, and other poems, 1917

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

Edith Wyatt biography

Britta Heise, Chicago Night River, November 2011. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

November / Edwin Arnold

from The Twelve Months

November

Come! in thy veil of ashen cloud
With mists around thee, like a shroud,
And wan face coloured with no light
Of sun or moon, by day or night;
I would not see thee glad and gay,
Dark month! that called my Love away!

I would not see thee otherwise,
Gray month! that hast the dying eyes;
Cold month! that com'st with icy hands
Chaining the waters and the lands!
So didst thou chill two hearts at play,
Dark month! that called my Love away!

And yet, I know, behind thy mists
The bright Sun shines, Love's star subsists!
If we could lift thy veil, may be,
Thy hidden face were good to see!
Come as thou wilt — I say not nay,
Dark month! that called my Love away!

~~

Edwin Arnold (1832-1904), 1884

from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thanurietz, Rain and Misty Mountains, November 2017 (detail). 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[December]

Edwin Arnold biography

The Death of the Flowers / William Cullen Bryant

The Death Of The Flowers

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race, of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

~~

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

from Poems, 1848

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Cullen Bryant biography

Librivox, "The Death of the Flowers." Courtesy Poems Cafe.

November / George J. Dance

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Rain, November 1889.
Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

November

        dying land
            crying sky
                cold, cold tears

~~
George J. Dance

from Logos, and 

other logoi, 2021

[December]

["November" by George J. Dance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.]

George J. Dance biography

The Thrush / Edward Thomas

The Thrush

When Winter's ahead,
What can you read in November
That you read in April
When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know
Than that, even as in April,
So in November,
Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore
Not to call November November,
And April April,
And Winter Winter — no more?

But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind.

~~
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
from Poems, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Edward Thomas biography

"The Thrush" read by B W Thornton.

See also: "On a Thrush Singing in Autumn," by Lewis Morris

October / Dinah Maria Craik

October

It is no joy to me to sit
    On dreamy summer eves,
When silently the timid moon
    Kisses the sleeping leaves,
And all things through the fair hushed earth
    Love, rest – but nothing grieves.
Better I like old Autumn
    With his hair tossed to and fro,
Firm striding o'er the stubble fields
    When the equinoctials blow.

When shrinkingly the sun creeps up
    Through misty mornings cold,
And Robin on the orchard hedge
    Sings cheerily and bold,
While the frosted plum
    Drops downward on the mould;–
And as he passes, Autumn
    Into earth's lap does throw
Brown apples gay in a game of play,
    As the equinoctials blow.

When the spent year its carol sinks
    Into a humble psalm,
Asks no more for the pleasure draught,
    But for the cup of balm,
And all its storms and sunshine bursts
    Controls to one brave calm,–
Then step by step walks Autumn,
    With steady eyes that show
Nor grief nor fear, to the death of the year,
    While the equinoctials blow.

~~
Dinah Maria Craik (1826-1887)

from Thirty Years: Being poems new and old, 1881

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Dinah Maria Craik biography

Enoch Luong, Autumn Robin (Canada), October 2022. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.