The best poems about Fall (or autumn) selected by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Now the leaves are falling fast’: so begins W. H. Auden’s ‘Autumn Song’, which features below in this compilation of ten of the best autumn poems in all of English literature. The following classic autumnal poems (or, to our readers in the US, the best poems about Fall) all capture, in their own way, the moods and sights of the autumn season, so as the leaves are already beginning to fall, let us turn the leaves of our poetry anthologies and discover some of the greatest autumn poems literature has to offer. Click on the title of each poem to read it.
Anonymous, ‘Merry it is while summer lasts’.
Miri it is while sumer i-last
With foulës song;
Oc now neghëth windës blast
And weder strong.
Ei, ei, what this night is long,
And Ich with wel michel wrong
Sorwe and murne and fast.
This poem heads our list of great autumn poems because it was written the earliest – some time in the thirteenth century – but it’s also a convenient starting-point since this little medieval poem focuses on the fading of summer and the coming of autumn. Click on the link above to read the poem, and a little more information about it: it’s number 2 on our list of great medieval poems.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 73.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang…
This celebrated sonnet by the Bard uses autumnal imagery to reflect the coming of old age – although Shakespeare was probably only in his early thirties (if that) when he wrote the poem. A great example of the pathetic fallacy. (The reference to ‘bare ruined choirs’ in this poem was interpreted by William Empson as a reference to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.) Click on the link above to read the poem in full.
John Clare, ‘Autumn’.
The thistledown’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot…
John Clare (1793-1864) is often overlooked in accounts of Romantic poetry, but he wrote 
John Keats, ‘To 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-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells…
Well, this poem was always going to make the list, wasn’t it? Probably the most famous poem about the season in all of English literature, Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ is also one of the finest autumn poems in the language. Jonathan Bate has a fine analysis of this poem in his book of eco-criticism, The Song of the Earth
Christina Rossetti, ‘From Sunset to Star Rise’.
Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot…
This sonnet is not one of the best-known poems by Christina Rossetti (1830-94), but it’s a real gem of a poem. Spoken by a woman who has chosen to ostracise herself from society and her friends – perhaps, as some critics have suggested, because she is a fallen woman – ‘From Sunset to Star Rise’ uses autumnal imagery and the disappearing summer to reflect on fallenness and sin as part of human nature. Click on the link above to read all of Rossetti’s poem.
A. E. Housman, ‘Tell me not here, it needs not saying’.
Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.
Autumn was the season of choice for A. E. Housman (1859-1936), who elsewhere wrote ‘I love no leafless land.’ Yet he wrote about leafless lands, and the sense of loss they convey, poignantly time and time again – and no better than here, in this poem from his 1922 volume Last Poems. Click on the link above to read all of this wonderfully wistful and nostalgic poem.
Adelaide Crapsey, ‘November Night’.
Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
Crapsey (1878-1914) is not much remembered now, but she left one important poetic legacy: the cinquain, or five-line unrhymed stanza form, modelled on the Japanese haiku. A number of her cinquains touch upon autumnal themes, and ‘November Night’ is the finest of these. (Though as Crapsey was an American poet we should probably describe ‘November Night’ as a great Fall poem.)
T. E. Hulme, ‘Autumn’.
A touch of cold in the Autumn night –
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.
Like Crapsey, T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) favoured short, often unrhymed lyrics, and he was arguably the first modernist poet writing in English. ‘Autumn’, written in 1908, establishes a delicate relationship between the ruddy moon, the red face of a farmer, and the time of year – autumn – through an unspoken connecting word, ‘harvest’. Eschewing rhyme and regular verse line lengths, and bringing the language of autumn poetry down to earth in the most literal sense, Hulme also manages to capture the wistful magic of the season of autumn. This poem marked the start of modernist poetry in England. (We have more classic poems about the moon in a separate post.)
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Autumn Rain’.
the winds that tread
out all the grain
of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain
caught up aloft:
This delicate poem, whose short lines and short stanzas suggest the droplets of falling rain, was first published in 1917, and the casualties of the First World War may be hinted at by Lawrence’s ‘dead / men that are slain’. The harvest time and Christian redemption are united under the rain falling from heaven. Click on the link above to read all of Lawrence’s autumn poem.
W. H. Auden, ‘Autumn Song’. This is one of Auden’s ‘Twelve Songs’ along with the more famous ‘Stop all the clocks’. ‘Autumn Song’ is a fine lyric about the brevity of youth and life’s disappointments, and takes the falling leaves of autumn as its starting point.
This concludes our pick of the ten greatest autumn poems in English. But what have we missed off? Are there any must-read autumn poems you’d recommend? Any classic poems about Fall that make you fall in love with the season? You can find more great poetry in our selection of classic summer poems, and our pick of classic American poems. For more classic poetry, we recommend The Oxford Book of English Verse
The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History
these are lovely and thanks for sharing them )
What a pleasant read for today…thank you :)
What a fabulous selection – and a fair number of these I didn’t know. Thank you so much!
Thanks! It was great fun putting this one together :)
To me Autumn is brown sticks, dumplings and golden-eared dogs. As I do not see any of them mentioned in this selection I will have to write my own.
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I would add Ernest Christopher Dowson’s “Autumnal”, http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dowson/4.html. Not in the same league as Keats as autum poems go but none the less a poignant and beautiful poem. Kevin
Reblogged this on newauthoronline and commented:
A fine selection of autumn poems here. I would add to the list Ernest Christopher Dowson’s “Autumnal”.
Some old favourites but a few new worthy names for me to investigate , this site is a minefield of treasure ; Adelaide Crapsey what a find!
Thank you! Crapsey is well worth reading more of – her cinquains are a delight :)
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Here’s one of my favorite Autumn poems–although it’s also a Spring poem.
Spring and Fall Related Poem Content Details
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Great list – thanks for all these. You forgot my favorite Autumn poem, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “God’s World.”
That’s a great addition – thanks! :)
Excellent choices. You’ve cast a pretty wide net, but if we include classic autumn poems from other languages, I’d nominate Rilke’s “Herbsttag” (“Autumn Day”):
http://translations.diehoren.com/2016/06/one-autumn-in-paris-rilkes-herbsttag.html
Frank Beck
New York
Rilke’s a beautiful addition to the list :)
Thanks.
*Onyeador Anthony with best of Regards and Compliments.*
On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Interesting Literature wrote:
> interestingliterature commented: “Rilke’s a beautiful addition to the list > :)” >
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