October poetry

Last night while I was adding some books on LibraryThing, I browsed a bit and found these poems in an old book, Things in Nature:


Autumn Dreams

When the maples turn to crimson
"Neath the fingers of the frost;
When the garden and the meadows
All their summer bloom have lost;
When from off the lowland marshes
Blue ethereal vapors rise,
And a dreamy haze is floating
Through the mellow, sunlit skies,---

Then I know the year is dying,
Soon the summer will be dead.
I can trace it in the flying
Of the black crows overhead;
I can hear it in the rustle
Of the dead leaves as I pass,
And the south wind's plaintive sighing
Through the dry and withered grass.

Ah, 'tis then I love to wander,
Wander idly and alone,
Listening to the solemn music
Of sweet nature's undertone;
Wrapt in thoughts I cannot utter,
Dreams my tongue cannot express,
Dreams that match the autumn's sadness
In their longing tenderness.

Thoughts of friends my heart has cherished
In the summer days gone by;
Hopes that all too soon have perished
E'en as summer blossoms die;
Luckless plans and vain ambitions,
Stranded, long ere summer's prime,
Buried, as will be the flowers,
'Neath the winter snows of time.

Yet, although my thoughts are sadder
Than in summer's wealth of bloom,
'Tis a sadness that makes better,
And is not akin to gloom.
Ah, the human heart seems purer,
Much of earth's defilement lost,
When the maples turn to crimson
'Neath the fingers of the frost.

~Mortimer Crane Brown



October's Bright Blue Weather

O suns and skies and clouds of June
And flowers of June together,
Ye can not rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather---

When loud the bumblebees make haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And golden-rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them from the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs,
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still, on old stone walls,
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods for winter waiting.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

~ Helen Hunt Jackson