Fall always puts me in the mood for poetry, so here are some of my favorite autumn poems I think everyone should read.
1. 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 die,
And will be born again,—but ah, to see Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn!—What is the Spring to me?
2. Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
3. ‘III. NATURE XXVIII. AUTUMN’ by Emily Dickinson
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.
4. 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 wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.
5. Final Autumn by Annie Finch
Maple leaves turn black in the courtyard.
Light drives lower and one bluejay crams
our cold memories out past the sun,
each time your traces come past the shadows
and visit under my looking-glass fingers
that lift and block out the sun.
Come—I’ll trace you one final autumn,
and you can trace your last homecoming
into the snow or the sun.
6. November for Beginners by Rita Dove
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing.