Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AUTUMN, by ROBERT SOUTHEY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Nay william, nay, not so; the changeful year Last Line: God, always, everywhere, and all in all. Subject(s): Autumn; Comfort; Death; God; Nature - Religious Aspects; Presence; Seasons; Fall; Dead, The | ||||||||
NAY William, nay, not so; the changeful year In all its due successions to my sight Presents but varied beauties, transient all, All in their season good. These fading leaves That with their rich variety of hues Make yonder forest in the slanting sun So beautiful, in you awake the thought Of winter, cold, drear winter, when these trees Each like a fleshless skeleton shall stretch Its bare brown boughs; when not a flower shall spread Its colours to the day, and not a bird Carol its joyauncebut all nature wear One sullen aspect, bleak and desolate, To eye, ear, feeling, comfortless alike. To me their many-coloured beauties speak Of times of merriment and festival, The year's best holyday: I call to mind The school-boy days, when in the falling leaves I saw with eager hope the pleasant sign Of coming Christmas, when at morn I took My wooden kalender, and counting up Once more its often-told account, smooth'd off Each day with more delight the daily notch. To you the beauties of the autumnal year Make mournful emblems, and you think of man Doom'd to the grave's long winter, spirit-broke, Bending beneath the burthen of his years, Sense-dull'd and fretful, "full of aches and pains," Yet clinging still to life. To me they shew The calm decay of nature, when the mind Retains its strength, and in the languid eye Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy That makes old age look lovely. All to you Is dark and cheerless; you in this fair world See some destroying principle abroad, Air, earth, and water full of living things, Each on the other preying; and the ways Of man, a strange perplexing labyrinth, Where crimes and miseries, each producing each, Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope That should in death bring comfort. Oh my frien That thy faith were as mine! that thou couldst see Death still producing life, and evil still Working its own destruction; couldst behold The strifes and tumults of this troubled world With the strong eye that sees the promised day Dawn through this night of tempest! all things then Would minister to joy; then should thine heart Be healed and harmonized, and thou shouldst feel God, always, everywhere, and all in all. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND BISHOP BRUNO by ROBERT SOUTHEY |
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