Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyts New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Autumn
Now Autumns fire burns slowly along the woods, And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, And night by night the monitory blast Wails in the key-hole, telling how it passd Oer empty fields, or upland solitudes, Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods Than any joy indulgent Summer dealt. William AllinghamDay and Night Songs. Autumnal Sonnet.
O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest 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. William BlakeTo Autumn. St. 1.
Earths crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. E. B. BrowningAurora Leigh. Bk. VII.
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in their freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen. BryantThird of November.
The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. BryantThe Death of the Flowers.
The mellow autumn came, and with it came The promised party, to enjoy its sweets. The corn is cut, the manor full of game; The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats In russet jacket;lynx-like is his aim; Full grows his bag, and wonderful his feats. Ah, nutbrown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants! And ah, ye poachers!Tis no sport for peasants. ByronDon Juan. Canto XIII. St. 75.
Yellow, mellow, ripened days, Sheltered in a golden coating; Oer the dreamy, listless haze, White and dainty cloudlets floating; Winking at the blushing trees, And the sombre, furrowed fallow; Smiling at the airy ease, Of the southward flying swallow. Sweet and smiling are thy ways, Beauteous, golden Autumn days. Will CarletonAutumn Days.
A breath, whence no man knows, Swaying the grating weeds, it blows; It comes, it grieves, it goes. Once it rocked the summer rose. John Vance CheneyPassing of Autumn.
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn; Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn. HoodOde. Autumn.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossd cottage trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core. KeatsTo Autumn.
Third act of the eternal play! In poster-like emblazonries Autumn once more begins today Tis written all across the trees In yellow letters like Chinese. Richard Le GallienneThe Eternal Play.
It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves. LongfellowPegasus in Pound.
What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair! LowellAn Indian Summer Reverie.
Every season hath its pleasures; Spring may boast her flowery prime, Yet the vineyards ruby treasures Brighten Autumns sobrer time. MooreSpring and Autumn.
Sorrow and the scarlet leaf, Sad thoughts and sunny weather; Ah me! this glory and this grief Agree not well together! T. W. ParsonsA Song for September.
Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring, Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing, Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove, Say, is not absence death to those who love? PopePastorals. Autumn. L. 27.
Thus sung the shepherds till th approach of night, The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deckd the glade, And the low sun had lengthened every shade. PopePastorals. Autumn. Last lines.
O, it sets my heart a clickin like the tickin of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodders in the shock. James Whitcomb RileyWhen the Frost is on the Punkin.
This sunlight shames November where he grieves In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun The day, though bough with bough be overrun. But with a blessing every glade receives High salutation. RossettiAutumn Idleness.
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying; And the year On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. ShelleyAutumn. A Dirge.
Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he smote again. SwinburneAutumn and Winter. I.
Autumn has come; Storming now heaveth the deep sea with foam, Yet would I gratefully lie there, Willingly die there. Esaias TegnérFridthjofs Saga. Ingeborgs Lament.
How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden? Umbered juices, And pulpèd oozes Pappy out of the cherry-bruises, Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden. With hair that musters In globèd clusters, In tumbling clusters, like swarthy grapes, Round thy brow and thine ears oershaden; With the burning darkness of eyes like pansies, Like velvet pansies Where through escapes The splendid might of thy conflagrate fancies; With robe gold-tawny not hiding the shapes Of the feet whereunto it falleth down, Thy naked feet unsandalled; With robe gold-tawny that does not veil Feet where the red Is meshed in the brown, Like a rubied sun in a Venice-sail. Francis ThompsonA Corymbus for Autumn. St. 2.
We lack but open eye and ear To find the Orients marvels here; The still small voice in autumns hush, Yon maple wood the burning bush. WhittierChapel of the Hermits.