Famous Autumn Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Autumn poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous autumn poems. These examples illustrate what a famous autumn poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Autumn Flowers

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
O crimson-tined flowers
  That live when others die,
What thoughtless hand unloving
  Could ever pass you by?
You are the last bright blossoms,
  The summer's after-glow,
When all her early children
  Have faded long ago.
Sweet golden-rod and xenia
  And crimson marigold,
What dreams of autumn splendor
  Your velvet leaves unfold.
Long, long ago the violets
  Have closed their...Read more of this...

Autumn Song

by Sarojini Naidu
 Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
 The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
 The wild wind blows in a cloud.

Hark to a voice that is calling
 To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the...Read more of this...

Sighs of Autumn Rain (1)

by Du Fu
 Rain in small plants autumn rot die Steps under jueming colour fresh Branch leaf full stem green feather canopy Blossom innumerable yellow gold money Cool wind sough and sigh blow you hard Fear you after now hard stand alone Hall above scholar free white head Face wind three smell fragrance weep  In autumn rain,...Read more of this...

Flowering Eucalypt In Autumn

by Les Murray
 That slim creek out of the sky
the dried-blood western gum tree
is all stir in its high reaches:

its strung haze-blue foliage is dancing
points down in breezy mobs, swapping
pace and place in an all-over sway

retarded en masse by crimson blossom.
Bees still at work up there tack
around their exploded furry likeness

and the lawn underneath's a napped rug
of eyelash drift, of blooms flared
like...Read more of this...

Song-Day in Autumn

by D. H. Lawrence
When the autumn roses
  Are heavy with dew,
Before the mist discloses
  The leaf's brown hue,
You would, among the laughing hills
  Of yesterday
Walk innocent in the daffodils,
Coiffing up your auburn hair
In a puritan fillet, a chaste white snare
To catch and keep me with you there
  So far away.

When from the autumn roses
  Trickles the dew,
When the...Read more of this...

Autumn Meditations (7)

by Du Fu
 Kunming lake water Han time achievement Martial emperor banners flags at eye in Weaver girl loom thread empty moon night Stone whale scale armour move autumn wind Wave toss wild rice seed sink cloud black Dew cold lotus pod fall powder red Pass fortified limit sky but bird road River lake fill earth one fisher old manRead more of this...

Autumn Meditations (4)

by Du Fu
 Hear say Chang'an resemble Chinese chess Hundred years world affairs not bear sorrow Nobility degree dwelling all new master Civil military clothes cap different former time Straight north pass mountain gold drum arouse Invade west cart horse feather document hurry Fish dragon still silent autumn river cold Motherland peace live have thing think I've heard them...Read more of this...

Autumn in the Garden

by Henry Van Dyke
 When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.

'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that...Read more of this...

Sonnet OF AUTUMN

by Charles Baudelaire
 THEY say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: 
"Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" 
Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise 
All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; 

And will not bare the secret of their shame 
To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, 
Nor their black legend write for...Read more of this...

By an Autumn Fire

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Now at our casement the wind is shrilling, 
Poignant and keen 
And all the great boughs of the pines between 
It is harping a lone and hungering strain 
To the eldritch weeping of the rain; 
And then to the wild, wet valley flying 
It is seeking, sighing, 
Something lost in the summer olden. 
When night was silver and day...Read more of this...

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

by Amy Lowell
 After a Print by George Cruikshank

It was a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled...Read more of this...

An Autumn Rain-Scene

by Thomas Hardy
 There trudges one to a merry-making 
With sturdy swing, 
On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament 
Is another bent, 
On whom the rain comes down.

One slowly drives his herd to the stall 
Ere ill befall, 
On whom the rain comes down.

This bears his missives of life and death 
With quickening breath, 
On whom the rain comes...Read more of this...

Sighs of Autumn Rain (3)

by Du Fu
 Chang'an commoner who notice Be locked in weigh gate watch surround wall Old people not go grow weeds Child without worry walk wind rain Rain sound sough and sigh hasten early cold West goose wing wet high fly hard Autumn come have not see white sun Mud dirt after earth what time dry  In Chang'an,...Read more of this...

Autumn And Winter

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.

First went my friend, in life's mid light of...Read more of this...

Autumn

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging...Read more of this...

An Autumn Evening

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below 
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow 
And wake among the harps of leafless trees 
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies. 

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar, 
And from a gulf of...Read more of this...

Autumn Meditations (2)

by Du Fu
 Kui prefecture lonely wall set sun slant Every rely Southern Dipper gaze capital city Hear ape real fall three sound tear Sent on mission vain follow eight month raft Picture ministry incense stove apart hidden pillow Mountain tower white battlements hide sad reed whistle Ask look stone on creeper moon Already reflect islet before rushes reeds flowers...Read more of this...

The Autumn

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them --
The summer flowers depart --
Sit still -- as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening...Read more of this...

The Death Of Autumn

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned
Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,
Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,—
Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and...Read more of this...

Dolor of Autumn

by D. H. Lawrence
 The acrid scents of autumn, 
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear 
Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn 
And the snore of the night in my ear. 

For suddenly, flush-fallen, 
All my life, in a rush 
Of shedding away, has left me 
Naked, exposed on the bush. 

I, on the bush of the globe, 
Like a newly-naked berry, shrink
Disclosed: but...Read more of this...

Autumn Feelings

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 FLOURISH greener, as ye clamber,
Oh ye leaves, to seek my chamber,

Up the trellis'd vine on high!
May ye swell, twin-berries tender,
Juicier far,--and with more splendour

Ripen, and more speedily!
O'er ye broods the sun at even
As he sinks to rest, and heaven

Softly breathes into your ear
All its fertilising fullness,
While the moon's refreshing coolness,

Magic-laden, hovers near;
And, alas! ye're watered ever

By a stream of...Read more of this...

Autumn Meditations (8)

by Du Fu
 Kunwu Yusu come winding Purple pavilion peak dark enter Meipi Fragrant rice peck surplus parrot grain Emerald wutong perch old male phoenix female phoenix branch Beautiful woman gather green spring mutual ask Transcendent companion same boat evening more move Colour brush before travel invade air image White head recite gaze bitter low hang From Kunwu, Yusu...Read more of this...

Autumn Fires

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 In the other gardens 
And all up the vale, 
From the autumn bonfires 
See the smoke trail! 

Pleasant summer over 
And all the summer flowers, 
The red fire blazes, 
The grey smoke towers. 

Sing a song of seasons! 
Something bright in all! 
Flowers in the summer, 
Fires in the fall!...Read more of this...

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation

by Stanley Kunitz
 Since that first morning when I crawled
into the world, a naked grubby thing,
and found the world unkind,
my dearest faith has been that this
is but a trial: I shall be changed.
In my imaginings I have already spent
my brooding winter underground,
unfolded silky powdered wings, and climbed
into the air, free as a puff of cloud
to sail over the steaming fields,
alighting anywhere I...Read more of this...

Autumn

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging...Read more of this...

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