Lyric Poem · Death & Loss
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.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Autumn: A Dirge” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/autumn-a-dirge
Quick facts
- Poem
- Autumn: A Dirge
- Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Length
- 22 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Death & Loss, Nature, Autumn
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 22 lines · 2 stanzas of 11 lines
- Refrains
- “Come, Months, come away,”“Of the dead cold Year,”“Come, Months, come away;”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
- Source record
- PoetryDBAutumn: A Dirge by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 389bb0645e183c86…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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