Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONGS OF AUTUMN, by HILDA SCOTT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONGS OF AUTUMN, by                    
First Line: Autumn is come
Last Line: Else her moods would not so subtly follow mine.
Subject(s): Autumn; Seasons; Fall


Autumn is come;
Almost too brief the advent not to be a thing of sleep.
There was the richness of green leaves one day,
And wrinkled piles of mocking, withered death below the trees, the next.
I, too, am suddenly grown old.
My thoughts, so full and blooming but a midnight past,
Lie scattered futilely along the broken fences
Of my mind.
My tongue has lost coherence
And babbles brokenly, as any little stream, half-frozen, will.
Into the still white corners of my heart the silent dusts
Of long-forgotten warmth advance.
There is a bitterness of rust within my mouth;
Autumn is come.

The tardy flush fades from the sky;
And the still mask of evening smoothly fits the westerning horizon.
(This is a moment for calm quiet thoughts to come upon the foot-sore highways of the mind,
Leaving no crimson heelprints, harried memories,
And slip as quietly into oblivion from whence they came.)
One star, with flat indifference, intrudes upon the chastened moment.
A whisper moves in shaken wind-like syllables among the trees,
Hinting of promised frost
And early winter.

I think there must be some strange whim of fall in me,
Or else I would not take such wild, impassioned joy in running,
With a rustling, whistling grace, through dry dead leaves;
I would not twine the flaunting sumac 'round my head,
And feel as though I were a hundred victors and possessed of all the laurels in the world.
I have thought long of fall.
I have watched her gay carousing --
Brazen hussy that she is, drunk upon the brilliant leakage of a hundred wheeling suns
And the still wine of moonlight.
And I have found a crying-out within me at this rash display
Of carelessness and courage from one so soon to die.
I think there must be something strange of fall within me,
Else her moods would not so subtly follow mine.





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