Ode to Autumn

Ode to Autumn

“No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace

As I have seen in one Autumnal face.”

John Donne

Leaves

"How silently they tumble down

And come to rest upon the ground

To lay a carpet, rich and rare,

Beneath the trees without a care,

Content to sleep, their work well done,

Colors gleaming in the sun.



At other times, they wildly fly

Until they nearly reach the sky.

Twisting, turning through the air

Till all the trees stand stark and bare.

Exhausted, drop to earth below

To wait, like children, for the snow."

(By Elsie N. Brady)

"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being.

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."

By Percy Bysshe Shelley 

"November comes

And November goes,

With the last red berries

And the first white snows.



With night coming early,

And dawn coming late,

And ice in the bucket

And frost by the gate.



The fires burn

And the kettles sing,

And earth sinks to rest

Until next spring."


By Elizabeth Coatsworth

“Every season hath its pleasures;

Spring may boast her flowery prime,

Yet the vineyard’s ruby treasures

Brighten Autumn’s sob’rer time.”

Thomas Moore

"When the trees their summer splendor

Change to raiment red and gold,

When the summer moon turns mellow,

And the nights are getting cold;

When the squirrels hide their acorns,

And the woodchucks disappear;

Then we know that it is autumn,

Loveliest season of the year."

By Carol L. Riser, Autumn

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841]”

― George Eliot

"The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry's cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I'll put a trinket on."

By Emily Dickinson

Lyric of Autumn

"There is music in the meadows, in the air --

Autumn is here;

Skies are gray, but hearts are mellow,

Leaves are crimson, brown, and yellow;

Pines are soughing, birches stir,

And the Gipsy trail is fresh beneath the fir.

There is rhythm in the woods, and in the fields,

Nature yields:

And the harvest voices crying,

Blend with Autumn zephyrs sighing;

Tone and color, frost and fire,

Wings the nocturne Nature plays upon her lyre."



By William Stanley Braithwaite

"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content."

Lin Yutang

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

Albert Camus

"Come said the wind to

the leaves one day,

Come o're the meadows

and we will play.

Put on your dresses

scarlet and gold,

For summer is gone

and the days grow cold."

- A Children's Song of the 1880's

AUTUMN WOODS

I like the woods

In autumn

When dry leaves hide the ground,

When the trees are bare

And the wind sweeps by

With a lonesome rushing sound.

I can rustle the leaves

In autumn

And I can make a bed

In the thick dry leaves

That have fallen

From the bare trees

Overhead.

By James S. Tippett 

The Last Leaf

by Harry Behn



A few leaves stay for a while on the trees

After their color begins to turn,

And no other leaves seem as gold as these

Not even the ones our bonfires burn

With golden flames in piles on the ground.

A few leaves stay so long that I found

The one last leaf on a tree in the snow,

And when a galloping wind came round

The edge of our house and started to blow

Snow dust to sparkles floating free.

When the wind ran away, almost with me,

And sunshine settled quiet and cold.

There, like a bird, still on the tree

Was that lonesome leaf, no longer gold

But curly and brown and dry and old.

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute

Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

Robert Browning

The End