Theme · 34 poems

Autumn Poems

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness: poems for the year's golden hour — harvest, falling light, and the beautiful business of letting go.

Autumn is the season English poetry cannot leave alone, because it does two jobs at once: it is the year at its most generous and the year visibly ending. Keats settled the matter in 1819 with 'To Autumn', which refuses to be sad — it fills the fruit, loads the vines, and lets the gnats mourn on its behalf. Shelley took the opposite tack in 'Ode to the West Wind', hearing in the same month a "destroyer and preserver" strong enough to scatter his words like leaves.

The useful distinction when you are choosing an autumn poem is which of those two moods you want. Hopkins's 'Spring and Fall' says the quiet thing out loud — the child weeping over falling leaves is really weeping for herself — and is the one to reach for at a memorial or a milestone birthday. For a September classroom, a harvest table, or a card that just wants the colour, the Dickinson autumn poems are shorter, brighter, and easier to read aloud.

LengthForm

Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

William Shakespeare · 1609

That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,

14 lines · sonnet

To Autumn

John Keats · 1820

ISeason of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

36 lines · ode

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1820

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

70 lines · ode

Autumn Evening (haiku)

Matsuo Bashō · 1680

on a bare branch sitsa crow, settled in for night —autumn evening falls

3 lines · haiku

One Red Maple Leaf

The QuillOak Editors

one red maple leafrides the river out of town —travel light, it says

3 lines · haiku

No Autumn's intercepting Chill

Emily Dickinson

No Autumn's intercepting ChillAppalls this Tropic Breast —But African Exuberance

4 lines · lyric

Letting Go (a Crapsey Cinquain)

The QuillOak Editors

Dusk fallsthe maples lettheir last gold go without

5 lines · cinquain

Instructions for the First Cold Morning

The QuillOak Editors

Wake before the heat comes on and let the house be honestly cold for one minute.Go to the window. The grass is silvered and the breath of the world is visible at last.Do not reach for the season you wanted. This is the season you were given; greet it.

5 lines · prose poem

Stanza

Percy Bysshe Shelley

If I walk in Autumn's evenWhile the dead leaves pass,If I look on Spring's soft heaven, —

6 lines · lyric

Autumn—overlooked my Knitting

Emily Dickinson

Autumn — overlooked my Knitting —Dyes — said He — have I —Could disparage a Flamingo —

8 lines · lyric

How happy I was if I could forget

Emily Dickinson

How happy I was if I could forgetTo remember how sad I amWould be an easy adversity

8 lines · lyric

As Summer into Autumn slips

Emily Dickinson

As Summer into Autumn slipsAnd yet we sooner say"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest

12 lines · lyric

Summer has two Beginnings

Emily Dickinson

Summer has two Beginnings —Beginning once in June —Beginning in October

12 lines · lyric

The name—of it—is "Autumn"

Emily Dickinson

The name — of it — is "Autumn" —The hue — of it — is Blood —An Artery — upon the Hill —

12 lines · lyric

Autumn Within

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is autumn; not withoutBut within me is the cold.Youth and spring are all about;

12 lines · lyric

Autumn Fires

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardensAnd all up the vale,From the autumn bonfires

12 lines · lyric

Autumn

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,

14 lines · lyric

Sonnet 128: How oft when thou, my music, music play'st

William Shakespeare

How oft when thou, my music, music play'st,Upon that blessed wood whose motion soundsWith thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st

14 lines · sonnet

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Gerard Manley Hopkins · 1880

Margaret, are you grievingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leaves, like the things of man, you

15 lines · lyric

Besides the Autumn poets sing

Emily Dickinson

Besides the Autumn poets singA few prosaic daysA little this side of the snow

16 lines · lyric

Summer begins to have the look

Emily Dickinson

Summer begins to have the lookPeruser of enchanting BookReluctantly but sure perceives

16 lines · lyric

Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday

Robert Burns

OLD Winter, with his frosty beard,Thus once to Jove his prayer preferred:“What have I done of all the year,

16 lines · lyric

Autumn: A Dirge

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,And the Year

22 lines · lyric

A Better Ressurection

Christina Rossetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;My heart within me like a stoneIs numbed too much for hopes or fears.

24 lines · lyric

Going to Heaven!

Emily Dickinson

Going to Heaven!I don't know when —Pray do not ask me how!

27 lines · lyric

When I heard at the Close of the Day

Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d;

27 lines · lyric

Homer's Hymn to the Earth: Mother of All

Percy Bysshe Shelley

O universal Mother, who dost keepFrom everlasting thy foundations deep,Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!

28 lines · lyric

The Patriot: An Old Story

Robert Browning

It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad;The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,

30 lines · lyric

An April Day

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When the warm sun, that bringsSeed-time and harvest, has returned again,'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs

32 lines · lyric

Ode To Autumn

John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and bless

33 lines · lyric

The Autumn

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,And turn your eyes around,Where waving woods and waters wild

40 lines · lyric

Merry Autumn

Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's all a farce,—these tales they tell About the breezes sighing,And moans astir o'er field and dell,

40 lines · lyric

The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home

Robert Herrick

To the Right Honourable Mildmay, Earl of WestmorelandCome, sons of summer, by whose toilWe are the lords of wine and oil;

56 lines · lyric

The Country Life

Robert Herrick

TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OFTHE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTYSweet country life, to such unknown,

78 lines · lyric

Common questions

What is the most famous autumn poem?

Keats's 'To Autumn' (1819), which opens “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” — three stanzas that treat the dying year as the year at its richest.

What is a good short autumn poem to read aloud?

Hopkins's 'Spring and Fall' is fifteen lines and lands hard; if you want warmth rather than elegy, Dickinson's autumn poems run a few lines each and suit a harvest table or classroom.