A boat, beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July -

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear -

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet,the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting  down the stream  -

Lingering in the golden gleam -

Life, what is but a dream?

Alice's Adventures  in  Wonderland/Lewis Carroll

When in these golden hours

The day dawns honey-bright

And down we stroll the misty paths

Slow ripening in the light

Of second flush, of sodden roses,

Of dewy maple leaves,

We pluck the meadow of autumn lilies

And berries from the trees.

We sit in the wonder of too-soft days,

Listening for summer's parting sighs,

And drink in the sweetness

of the new-mown morning

And lie under whippoorwill skies.

 Deborah A. Bennett

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.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, 

which have no weightier thought than 

the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, 

or the stretching of their many stiff fingers 

into the cold sky of the passing winter. 

Fernando Pessoa

XVII.

Have you noticed that autumn

is like a yellow cow?

And how later the autumnal beast

is a dark skeleton?

And how winter collects

so many layers of blue?

And who asked springtime

for its kingdom of clear air?

LXXII.

If all rivers are sweet

where does the sea get its salt?

How do the seasons know

they must change their shirt?

Why so slowly in winter

and later with such a rapid shudder?

LXIX.

With which stars do they go on speaking,

the rivers that never reach the sea?

And how do the roots know

they must climb toward the light?

And then greet the air

with so many flowers and colors?

Is it always the same spring

who revives her role?

LXXIV.

Why does it linger in the branches

until the leaves fall?

And where are its yellow trousers

left hanging?

Is it true that autumn seems to wait

for something to happen?

Perhaps the trembling of a leaf

or the movement of the universe?

Is there a magnet under the earth,

brother magnet of autumn?

When is the appointment of the rose

decreed under the earth?

Pablo Neruda/The book of questions

Ode to a Chestnut on the Ground

From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.

In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world,
birds
bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising, rising.

You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small breasts
of the islands of America.

You fell,
you struck
the ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the old
chestnut sighed with the mouths
of a forest of trees,
a red leaf of autumn fell,
resolutely, the hours marched on
across the earth.

Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth. 

Pablo Neruda

Autumn, the season that teaches us that change can be beautiful.

Unknown

Catch a vista of maples

in that long light and you see Autumn

glowing through the leaves...

Hal Borland