Ode to Autumn 1333 Where is the pride of Summer, the green prime,— The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard, The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Enough of fear and shadowy despair, To frame her cloudy prison for the soul! 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, The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 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; 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, Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Ode to the West Wind 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 1335 III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 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, IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 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 thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley [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. Autumn Tints 1337 The chill rain is falling; the nipped worm is crawling; For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone Come, months, come away; Of the dead, cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] AUTUMN THE morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The maple wears a gayer scarf, I'll put a trinket on. Emily Dickinson [1830-1886] AUTUMN TINTS CORAL-COLORED yew-berries Marigolds by cottage doors Flaunt their golden pride, Crimson-punctured bramble leaves |