AUTUMN POEMS

At Needlehole
by: Alison Brackenbury (1953- )



How lovely the land lies in October,
Still as the moon.
The new wheat is planted.
The drivers are gone
To pile up their wood
Or be soothed by a screen.

The felled tree is sawn,
The robin’s cross cry
Now liquid and long,
Uncannily high.
The cold finds my fingers.
The moon fills the sky.

Autumn
by: A. Ferdinand Herold (1865-1957)
translated by Jethro Bithell



DEAR, do you see the autumn fruits a-lying?
Listen, what slow, monotonous flute is sighing
A song of parting through the shivering wold?
O the song of the flute is pale, the tune so old
Its passing seems to wither all the leaves.
The sky has lost now its diaphanous eves
Which charmed your eyes not very long ago.
No gladioli now nor lilies blow,
And see the rose-leaves on the garden grass,
The last flower that the autumn slays, alas!
Dear, can you hear the falling of the fruit?
Into the night sounds, weeps the woodland flute,
Into the night that veils our happy path,
Into the night that all things shadowed hath.

WE in the lonely walk by custom marred
Pace once again with steps how burdensome,
And by a bleeding autumn pale and numb
The opening of the avenue is barred.

As in a hospital or prison yard,
The air is chastened with a sadness dumb,
And every golden leaf, its hour being come,
Falls slowly like a memory to the sward.

Between us Silence walks.... Our hearts do ail,
Each is out-travelled, and its wasted sail
Selfishly dreams of being homeward bound

But on these evening woods such sadness broods,
Under the sleeping sky our heart its moods
Forgets by calling back the past profound,

With a veiled voice, as a dead child's might sound.

Behold! the tender Autumn flower
Is purpling on the hill,
The roses wither on the bower,
And vanished is the dill.
The morning air is keen and bright,
The afternoon is full of light,
And Hesper ushers in the night
With breezes damp and chill.

The purple harvest of the vine
Is bleeding in the press,
And Bacchus comes to taste the wine
And all our labours bless.
Then bring a golden bowl immense,
And mix enough to drown your sense,
And care not if you soon commence
Your secrets to confess.

For wine a mirror is, to show
The image that is fair,
The friend of lightsome mirth, the foe
Of shadow-haunting care.
So fill your Teian goblet up,
And scatter jewels from the cup,
And drink until the last hiccough
Shall drown your latest woe.

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-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

The autumn comes, a maiden fair
In slenderness and grace,
With nodding rice-stems in her hair
And lilies in her face.
In flowers of grasses she is clad;
And as she moves along,
Birds greet her with their cooing glad
Like bracelets' tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night
Of multitudinous stars;
Her silken robe is white moonlight,
set free from cloudy bars;
And on her face (the radiant moon)
Bewitching smiles are shown:
She seems a slender maid, who soon
Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants
Are shivering in the breeze;
While in his brisk caresses dance
The blossomed-burdened trees;
He ruffles every lily-pond
Where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lover's fancies fond
The young man's eager heart.

Let's go down the road together, you and I,
Let's go down the road together,
Through the vivid autumn weather;
Let's go down the road together when the red leaves fly.
Let's go searching, searching after
Joy and mirth and love and laughter--
Let's go down the road together, you and I.

Let's go hunting for adventure, you and I,
For the romance we are knowing
Waits for us, alive and glowing,
For the romance that has always passed us by.
Let's have done with tears and sighing,
What if summer-time is dying?
Let's go hunting for adventure, you and I.

Let's go down the road together, you and I--
And if you are frightened lest you
Weary grow, my arms will rest you,
As we take the road together when the red leaves fly.
Springtime is the time for mating?
Ah, a deeper love is waiting
Down the autumn road that calls us, you and I!

The long September evening dies
In mist along the fields and lanes;
Only a few faint stars surprise
The lingering twilight as it wanes.

Night creeps across the darkening vale;
On the horizon tree by tree
Fades into shadowy skies as pale
As moonlight on a shadowy sea.

And, down the mist-enfolded lanes,
Grown pensive now with evening,
See, lingering as the twilight wanes,
Lover with lover wandering.

THE acrid scents of autumn,
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear
Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn
And the snore of the night in my ear.

For suddenly, flush-fallen,
All my life, in a rush
Of shedding away, has left me
Naked, exposed on the bush.

I, on the bush of the globe,
Like a newly-naked berry, shrink
Disclosed: but I also am prowling
As well in the scents that slink

Abroad: I in this naked berry
Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;
And I in the stealthy, brindled odours
Prowling about the lush

And acrid night of autumn;
My soul, along with the rout,
Rank and treacherous, prowling,
Disseminated out.

For the night, with a great breath intaken,
Has taken my spirit outside
Me, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,
Like a man who has died.

At the same time I stand exposed
Here on the bush of the globe,
A newly-naked berry of flesh
For the stars to probe.

Grows a weed
More richly here beside our mellow seas
That is the Autumn's harbinger and pride.
When fades the cardinal-flower, whose heart-red bloom
Glows like a living coal upon the green
Of the midsummer meadows, then how bright,
How deepening bright like mounting flame doth burn
The golden rod upon a thousand hills!
This is the Autumn's flower, and to my soul
A token fresh of beauty and of life,
And life's supreme delight.

It is already Autumn, and not in my heart only,
The leaves are on the ground,
Green leaves untimely browned,
The leaves bereft of Summer, my heart of Love left lonely.

Swift, in the masque of seasons, the moment of each mummer,
And even so fugitive
Love's hour, Love's hour to live:
Yet, leaves, ye have had your rapture, and thou, poor heart, thy Summer!

I HAVE been watching through grey window panes
This evening falling ... Someone is astray
Along the ditches filled with autumn rains ...
O wearied wanderer upon thy way
At the dusk hour when shepherds leave the hill,
Hasten! The doors are closed, no fires burn
In lands where thou returnest sick and chill.
Empty the highroad is, and the lucerne
Sounds far away faint with discouragement ...
O hasten: the old lumbering carts have blown
Their lanterns out ... It is the autumn, bent
And gone to sleep over the cold hearth-stone ...
Autumn is singing in the dead vine-shoots ...
It is the hour when corpses on the flood,
Dreamily floating, feel in their white blood
The first cold risen from the river's roots,
And go down to the deep and sheltering mud.

MY Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

O HUSHED October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

The swallows wheel about the sky,
Trying their wings for overseas;
The thistledown goes floating by;
At midnight shine the Pleiades;
And there are mushrooms in the dawn,
And blackberries all wet with mist;
Ripe chestnuts dropping on the lawn;
Red apples that the sun has kissed.
The beech is touched with fire o'erhead,
Largess of gold the lime down flings,
Cool asters crowd the garden bed,
And over all the robin sings.

When the autumn roses
Are heavy with dew,
Before the mist discloses
The leaf's brown hue,
You would, among the laughing hills
Of yesterday
Walk innocent in the daffodils,
Coiffing up your auburn hair
In a puritan fillet, a chaste white snare
To catch and keep me with you there
So far away.

When from the autumn roses
Trickles the dew,
When the blue mist uncloses
And the sun looks through,
You from those startled hills
Come away,
Out of the withering daffodils;
Thoughtful, and half afraid,
Plaiting a heavy, auburn braid
And coiling it round the wise brows of a maid
Who was scared in her play.

When in the autumn roses
Creeps a bee,
And a trembling flower encloses
His ecstasy,
You from your lonely walk
Turn away,
And leaning to me like a flower on its stalk,
Wait among the beeches
For your late bee who beseeches
To creep through your loosened hair till he reaches,
Your heart of dismay.

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

'The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

'The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load