Autumn: A Dirge

[Published by Mrs. Shelley in Posthumous Poems, 1824.]



1.
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 death-bed, 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.
2.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the Year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone             
To his dwelling;
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play--
Ye, follow the bier                                                  
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.