[ { "title": "The Autumn", "author": "Elizabeth Barrett Browning", "lines": [ "Go, sit upon the lofty hill,", "And turn your eyes around,", "Where waving woods and waters wild", "Do hymn an autumn sound.", "The summer sun is faint on them --", "The summer flowers depart --", "Sit still -- as all transform'd to stone,", "Except your musing heart.", "", "How there you sat in summer-time,", "May yet be in your mind;", "And how you heard the green woods sing", "Beneath the freshening wind.", "Though the same wind now blows around,", "You would its blast recall;", "For every breath that stirs the trees,", "Doth cause a leaf to fall.", "", "Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth", "That flesh and dust impart:", "We cannot bear its visitings,", "When change is on the heart.", "Gay words and jests may make us smile,", "When Sorrow is asleep;", "But other things must make us smile,", "When Sorrow bids us weep!", "", "The dearest hands that clasp our hands, --", "Their presence may be o'er;", "The dearest voice that meets our ear,", "That tone may come no more!", "Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,", "Which once refresh'd our mind,", "Shall come -- as, on those sighing woods,", "The chilling autumn wind.", "", "Hear not the wind -- view not the woods;", "Look out o'er vale and hill-", "In spring, the sky encircled them --", "The sky is round them still.", "Come autumn's scathe -- come winter's cold --", "Come change -- and human fate!", "Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,", "Can ne'er be desolate." ], "linecount": "40" }, { "title": "Besides the Autumn poets sing", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "lines": [ "Besides the Autumn poets sing", "A few prosaic days", "A little this side of the snow", "And that side of the Haze --", "", "A few incisive Mornings --", "A few Ascetic Eves --", "Gone -- Mr. Bryant's \"Golden Rod\" --", "And Mr. Thomson's \"sheaves.\"", "", "Still, is the bustle in the Brook --", "Sealed are the spicy valves --", "Mesmeric fingers softly touch", "The Eyes of many Elves --", "", "Perhaps a squirrel may remain --", "My sentiments to share --", "Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind --", "Thy windy will to bear!" ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "I am the autumnal sun", "author": "Henry David Thoreau", "lines": [ "Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature", "-- not his Father but his Mother stirs", "within him, and he becomes immortal with her", "immortality. From time to time she claims", "kindredship with us, and some globule", "from her veins steals up into our own.", "", "I am the autumnal sun,", "With autumn gales my race is run;", "When will the hazel put forth its flowers,", "Or the grape ripen under my bowers?", "When will the harvest or the hunter's moon", "Turn my midnight into mid-noon?", "I am all sere and yellow,", "And to my core mellow.", "The mast is dropping within my woods,", "The winter is lurking within my moods,", "And the rustling of the withered leaf", "Is the constant music of my grief...." ], "linecount": "18" }, { "title": "Elegy IX: The Autumnal", "author": "John Donne", "lines": [ "No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace", "As I have seen in one autumnall face.", "Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,", "This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.", "If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame,", "Affection here takes Reverence's name.", "Were her first years the Golden Age; that's true,", "But now she's gold oft tried, and ever new.", "That was her torrid and inflaming time,", "This is her tolerable Tropique clime.", "Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,", "He in a fever wishes pestilence.", "Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,", "They were Love's graves; for else he is no where.", "Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit", "Vowed to this trench, like an Anachorit.", "", "And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,", "He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.", "Here dwells he, though he sojourn ev'ry where,", "In progress, yet his standing house is here.", "Here, where still evening is; not noon, nor night;", "Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight", "In all her words, unto all hearers fit,", "You may at revels, you at counsel, sit.", "This is Love's timber, youth his under-wood;", "There he, as wine in June enrages blood,", "Which then comes seasonabliest, when our taste", "And appetite to other things is past.", "Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the Platane tree,", "Was loved for age, none being so large as she,", "Or else because, being young, nature did bless", "Her youth with age's glory, Barrenness.", "If we love things long sought, Age is a thing", "Which we are fifty years in compassing;", "If transitory things, which soon decay,", "Age must be loveliest at the latest day.", "But name not winter-faces, whose skin's slack;", "Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack;", "Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade;", "Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made;", "Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,", "To vex their souls at Resurrection;", "Name not these living deaths-heads unto me,", "For these, not ancient, but antique be.", "I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay", "With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.", "Since such love's natural lation is, may still", "My love descend, and journey down the hill,", "Not panting after growing beauties so,", "I shall ebb out with them, who homeward go." ], "linecount": "50" } ]