There is something about autumn that tends to make us a little bit more cognizant and contemplative of time’s passing. Perhaps it’s the stark contrast between the vivaciousness of summer and the dreariness of winter that evokes poetic feelings of transience and longing. At the same time, autumn is celebrated for its brilliant burst of colors, reminding us, in the words of Albert Camus, that “autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” Longing, sadness, transience, and hope are the universal themes that animate the poems you are about to read.
HIGH ROAD IN AUTUMN (a version of Po-Chu-I, Tang dynasty)
Climbing the high road
I begin to realize
the smallness of men.
Gazing from the peak
I begin see the vanity
of this world.
I turn back and hurry home.
In the great silence,
a single leave falls
to the autumn earth.
China’s Tang dynasty (618 – 906) produced many great poets, of which Po-chu-I is one. “High Road in Autumn” wistfully recounts Po’s journey toward home in a time of political unrest, using the imagery of transience (falling leaves) to remind of man’s impermanence on this earth.
AUTUMN AIR by Li Bai
The autumn air is clear,
The autumn moon is bright
Fallen leaves gather and scatter
The jackdaw perches and starts anew.
We think of each other, when do we meet again?
My feelings are hard this hour, this night!
Li Bai (or Li Po) is one of the greatest poets of the golden age of Chinese culture, the Tang dynasty. ‘Autumn Air’ is a short poem that expresses the heart’s longing for a loved one, using two popular imageries of autumn: a full moon and falling leaves.
The next poem is a Japanese waka, the classic form of Japanese poetry that was written more than one thousand years ago.
DEER ON PINE MOUNTAINS
The deer on pine mountain,
where there are no falling leaves
knows the coming of autumn
only by the sound of his own voice
~ Onakatomi no Yoshinobu
Ōnakatomi no Yoshinobu (921–991) was a middle Heian period waka poet and Japanese nobleman and a member of the elite 36 Poetry Immortals of classical Japan. In this waka, he uses the deer as a symbol of autumn and loneliness. You can almost feel for the poet, who pictures himself as a solitary deer perched on a pine mountain so quiet he only hears the sound of his own voice. Yet he perseveres, perhaps for the homecoming of a loved one, using the pine as a symbol of steadfastness and endurance.
In contrast to Asian poems, the tone of Western autumn poems are decidedly more upbeat, reflecting the very different cultural influences of east and west. Here is a famous autumn poem by the romantic English poet, John Keats (1795-1821).
TO AUTUMN by John Keats (excerpts)
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.
John Keats (1795-1821) was a prominent English poet, and regarded as one of the best Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Keats had a style “heavily loaded with sensualities”, notably in the series of odes. Typical of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion by emphasising natural imagery.
Our last poem, Ode to Autumn is by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. From his hometown of Temuco in southern Chile, Neruda grew up close to nature and in dozens of odes, including this one, he expressed his joy in the beauty of nature and morns its seasonal loss. Reproduced here is an excerpt of the full ode which is quite long.
ODE TO AUTUMN by Pablo Neruda
Autumn is modest
like the woodcutters.
It’s hard to remove
all the leaves
of all the trees
of all the countries.
Spring sewed them together on the fly
and now
one must allow them
to fall
as if they were
yellow birds.