The Home Book of Verse Volume Iii Part 18

ODE TO AUTUMN

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;-- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

Where are the songs of Summer?--With the sun, Oping the dusky eyelids of the South, Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.

Where are the merry birds?--Away, away, On panting wings through the inclement skies, Lest owls should prey Undazzled at noonday, And tear with h.o.r.n.y beak their l.u.s.trous eyes.

Where are the blooms of Summer?--In the West, Blus.h.i.+ng their last to the last sunny hours, When the mild Eve by sudden Night is pressed Like tearful Prosperine, s.n.a.t.c.hed from her flowers, To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer,--the green prime,-- The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime Trembling,--and one upon the old oak-tree!

Where is the Dryad's immortality?-- Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through In the smooth holly's green eternity.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplished h.o.a.rd, The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stored The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have winged across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.

Alone, alone, Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, With the last leaves for a love-rosary, Whilst all the withered world looks drearily, Like a dim picture of the drowned past In the hushed mind's mysterious far away, Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last Into that distance, gray upon the gray.

O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Under the languid downfall of her hair: She wears a coronal of flowers faded Upon her forehead, and a face of care;-- There is enough of withered everywhere To make her bower,--and enough of gloom; There is enough of sadness to invite, If only for the rose that died, whose doom Is Beauty's,--she that with the living bloom Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light: There is enough of sorrowing, and quite Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,-- Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl; Enough of fear and shadowy despair, To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!

Thomas Hood [1799-1845]

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

I 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,

Yellow and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence stricken mult.i.tudes! O thou Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odors plain and hill;

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision--I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee--tameless, and swift, and proud.

V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own?

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like withered, leaves, to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley [1792-1822]

AUTUMN: A DIRGE

The warm sun is failing; the bleak wind is wailing; The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers are dying; And the Year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.

Come, months, come away, From November to May; In your saddest array Follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling; the nipped worm is crawling; The rivers are swelling; the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play-- Ye, follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear.

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley [1792-1822]

AUTUMN

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-fas.h.i.+oned, I'll put a trinket on.