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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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...
by
Paul Verlaine
With long sobs
the violin-throbs
of autumn wound
my heart with languorous
and montonous
sound.
Choking and pale
When i mind the tale
the hours keep,
my memory strays
down other days
and I weep;
and I let me go
where ill winds blow
now here, now there,
harried and sped,
even as a dead
leaf, anywhere....Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden...Read more of this...
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...
by
Du Fu
Jade dew wither wound maple forest Wu mountain wu gorge air desolate and dreary River on wave meet sky surge Pass on wind cloud join earth dark Shrub chrysanthemum two open it day tear Single boat one link hometown heart Cold clothes place place urge knife measure Baidicheng high urgent evening flat stone Jade dew...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
The moon shimmers in green water.
White herons fly through the moonlight.
The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:
into the night, singing, they paddle home together....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Besides the Autumn poets sing
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the Haze --
A few incisive Mornings --
A few Ascetic Eves --
Gone -- Mr. Bryant's "Golden Rod" --
And Mr. Thomson's "sheaves."
Still, is the bustle in the Brook --
Sealed are the spicy valves --
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The Eyes of many Elves --
Perhaps a squirrel...Read more of this...
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...
by
Adam Lindsay Gordon
‘WHERE shall we go for our garlands glad
At the falling of the year,
When the burnt-up banks are yellow and sad,
When the boughs are yellow and sere?
Where are the old ones that once we had,
And when are the new ones near?
What shall we do for our garlands glad
At the falling of the year?’...Read more of this...
by
Walter Savage Landor
Whoever has no house now will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
And wander on the boulevards, up and down...
- from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke
Its stain is everywhere.
The sharpening air
of late afternoon
is now the colour of tea.
Once-glycerined green leaves
burned by a summer sun
are brittle and...Read more of this...
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...
by
Du Fu
Peng lai palace imperial palace face south hill Receive dew gold stem sky amid West gaze jade pond descend Queen Mother of the West East come purple vapour fill Han pass Cloud shift pheasant tail open palace door Sun surround dragon scales recognise holy face One lie cold river startle year late Number times blue chain shine...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of ******* in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.
All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.
Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Qutang gorge mouth bend river bank 10,000 li wind mist join pale autumn Calyx secret wall through imperial energy Lotus little park enter border sorrow Pearl curtain embroider pillar surround yellow crane Brocade hawser ivory mast rise white gull Turn head can regret sing dance place Qin middle from old emperor place The mouth of the...Read more of this...
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...
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...
by
William Allingham
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...Read more of this...
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...
by
Emily Dickinson
Autumn -- overlooked my Knitting --
Dyes -- said He -- have I --
Could disparage a Flamingo --
Show Me them -- said I --
Cochineal -- I chose -- for deeming
It resemble Thee --
And the little Border -- Dusker --
For resembling Me --...Read more of this...
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...
by
Delmore Schwartz
(After Rilke)
The city floats no longer like a bait
To hook the nimble darting summer days.
The glazed and brittle palaces pulsate and radiate
And glitter. Summer's garden sways,
A heap of marionettes hanging down and dangled,
Leaves tired, torn, turned upside down and strangled:
Until from forest depths, from bony leafless trees
A will wakens: the admiral, lolling long at ease,
Has been commanded, overnight --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,
And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved --
So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity....Read more of this...
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...
by
Sylvia Plath
Summer grows old, cold-blooded mother.
The insects are scant, skinny.
In these palustral homes we only
Croak and wither.
Mornings dissipate in somnolence.
The sun brightens tardily
Among the pithless reeds. Flies fail us.
he fen sickens.
Frost drops even the spider. Clearly
The genius of plenitude
Houses himself elsewhwere. Our folk thin
Lamentably....Read more of this...
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...
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