Autumn: My Favorite Season

Not only because I was born in October!  It is a time of color and I am a person who reponds readily to visual stimuli.

Here is a poem about autumn by William Shakespeare.


Sonnet 73
by William Shakespeare (1609)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.


As a gardiner, I recognize that plants expire this time of the year, no matter how I much I coax them to live a few more weeks.  There is a sadness to the garden in fall.  It is the time to pull up dead plants and toss them into the mulch pile.  But in preparing the ground for the next year's planting, I'm reminded that life is victorious over death and I thank God.

Describing the Seasons

My writing students are working on showing the seasons rather than telling about the seasons.  It is a difficult distinction for beginning writers.  This student shows a picture of autumn to the reader by carefully selecting words.

Autumn

Air is crisp and cool.
Umbrellas twirl in the rain.
Tree leaves, multicolored, spin down to earth in the wind.
Under shelter of warm foliage, squirrels scamper.
Mice gather for the advent of winter flurries.
Nuts are scattered beneath tall trees.

-- Courtney Rupp, Grade 6

The Beauty of Autumn

Here are some poems about Autumn to go along with the bright leaves. We're having glorious Fall color here in central Kentucky!

Autumn Daybreak

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,
I know—for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor—
How may boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.
Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;
When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay


October

AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

--William Cullen Bryant