Autumnal
The year has been feeling somewhat autumnal lately: mostly it’s a quality of the light and burnish on leaves before they fully turn, as well as the nights growing cooler and the days shortening at both ends, but it’s a lovely time of year. One of my favourites, although I find much to like in every season.
Anyway, the change of season has me thinking about poetry, and when it comes to autumn, its hard to go past Keats’ classic, To Autumn:
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch eaves run…”
To read the full poem, click here: Ode To Autumn: John Keats
Like many successful poems, it’s also loaned “season of mists” to the title of other works, such as Anne Mather’s Season of Mists, Sarah Woodhouse’s A Season of Mists, and Season of Mists in Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series of graphic novels.
Another favourite that is centered in autumn, both in setting and emotional weight (although not about the season, as such) is Ezra Pound’s The River Merchant’s Wife:
“…The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden…”
To read the full poem, click on The Poetry Foundation site, here
Seasonal change is one of the enduring characteristics of haiku, and the following one of the most famous examples from Haiku master, Matsuo Basho:
A solitary
crow on a bare branch–
autumn evening
by Matsuo Basho 1644-1694, translated by Sam Hamill
Other autumn poems I’ve featured …on Anything, Really include:
- Autumn Fires by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
- blown from the west (a haiku) by Yosa Buson
- The Puk-Wudgies by PR Chalmers
Not to mention my own Autumn and This Is My Heart.