Autumnal

In Competition No. 2969 you were invited to submit a poem about autumn in the style of the poet of your choice. It was a stellar entry so I’ll keep it brief to make way for an extra winner. Those printed below take £20 each; D.A. Prince nabs £30. High fives all round.

Oh Autumn, you are one of the loveliest of seasons
And for this there are a multitude of reasons.
You bring us apples, and windfalls hardly bruised at all
Despite being associated with Eve, the Serpent and The Fall.
Then there are blackberries to accompany them for puddings and tarts
(At least until the Devil drags his tail across their fruiting parts,
Because there are all sorts of folk tales and such,
Even if nowadays we don’t believe them, much.)
The Harvest Festival hymns rise up to Heaven
With a wonderful noise as sung by Angels (eleven).
Everything is fruitful and there is great abundance
Although perhaps the marrows are a bit too much redundance.
The sun is golden and all the land is mellow
While the leaves turn an interesting shade of yellow.
Great poets have written about you and I count myself in their number.
Meanwhile I hope my Muse may never slumber.
D.A. Prince/William McGonagall

Whan that Septembre with his windy moanes
The somer’s heate hath driven from the bones,
And the autumnal rain turneth to sleet,
The while dampe-rot riseth beneathe the feet,
And blissful birdes, that whilom sang in trees,
Now flee to Afric shores before they freeze,
(For this they do the first autumnal day),
Then longen folke to go on holiday,
That they th’autumnal sorowes may shake off
And lose th’autumnal phlegm and lustie cough,
And to the sonne maken theit pilgrimage
That they avoid the season’s chilly rage.
Now al who may, from every shire’s end
To the distant Canarie-Islandes wend.
When Autumn stealeth comforte like a thefe,
So maun we hie ourselves to Tenerife.
Brian Murdoch/Chaucer

For Keats this might have been a season of mists,
But for me it’s the time of year I’m most likely to slit my wrists.
The darkness, the cold blasts, the acorns desperately squirrelled,
Remind me of nothing less than the end of the living, breathing world.
I prefer my leaves to be green, not orange or yellow,
And my fruitfulness not quite as mellow.
Sometimes I think Keats, bless his soul, was a big fat liar
To say the songs of spring could be happily replaced by a gnat’s wailful choir
Or that there’s music in the way a full-grown lamb bleats.
We all know autumn sucks. Nice try, Keats.
Robert Schechter/Ogden Nash

Most popular

Madeline Grant

Rachel Reeves looks increasingly petrified

Wet leaves lie deep along Wellington Avenue.
Bonfire smoke hangs in each skeleton tree.
Me with Myfanwy laughing and sliding,
Racing the dusk home for Nursery tea.

Cornering fast into Waterloo Crescent
I trip on a kerbstone and graze a bare knee,
A wound soon repaired by her lick on a hankie
And promise of honey and crumpets for tea.

Though sixty more autumns have withered behind me
I still feel the thrill in the child that was me
At the little pink hearts round the edge of her hankie,
The smell of wet leaves and her taste on my knee.
Martin Parker/John Betjeman

Autumn strikes with wind and rain,
With wind and rain,
The trampman’s scourge, the ploughman’s bane,
The curse of summer’s end
When dark clouds gather, grim and grey,
And storm birds wing across the bay
And tempests raging night and day
The hardiest branches rend.
Fleeing spring and summer past,
Ay, summer past,
I, to my autumn come at last,
Must on its byways tread,
No more beguiled by blind belief
But bowed by toil, beset with grief,
I, withering like a severed leaf,
View winter’s gloom ahead.
Alan Millard/Thomas Hardy

#1776
A leaf fell on my window sill
As I was sitting nigh —
I looked and looked at it until
Another caught my eye —

I could accept the how of such
But struggled with the why —
It seemed to be a bit too much
That one by one must die —
c.1884 — Amherst
Jane Blanchard/Emily Dickinson

If you can watch the days of summer waning
And keep your cool when all around is grey,
If you can hold your head up when it’s raining
And put your trusty barbecue away;
If you can bear the mists, the murky mornings,
While grabbing jumpers, coats and thermal socks,
If you can rise and shine, and heed the warnings
To queue up for your flu jab at the Doc’s.

If you can stand the begging trick-and-treaters,
See stores already filled with Christmas tat,
If you can turn the dial up on your heaters,
To raise the setting on the thermostat;
If you can rake the leaves and find a plumber
To clear them from the gutter — when it’s done
You’ll spurn your distant memories of summer
And stock up with some anti-freeze, my son!
Sylvia Fairley/Rudyard Kipling