Saturday Poetry Corner: Tranquility At Length When Autumn Comes

 

 

 

 

"Autumn"
(1877)
Winslow Homer
(1836-1910)
American artist
Image courtesy/The National Gallery of Art

 

 
 

 Tranquility at length when autumn comes,

Will lie upon the spirit like that haze

Touching far islands on fine autumn days.

With tenderest blue, like bloom on purple plums;

Harvest will ring, but not as summer hums,

With noisy enterprise-to broaden, raise,

Proceed, proclaim, establish: autumn stays.

The marching year one moment; stills the drums.

Then sits the insistent cricket in the grass;

But on the gravel crawls the chilly bee;

And all is over that could come to pass

Last year; excepting this: the mind is free

One moment, to compute, refute, amass,

Catalogue, question, contemplate, see. 

 

  

"Tranquility At Length When Autumn Comes"
Sonnet 161
(1946)
Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892-1950)
American lyrical poetess and playwright