The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Autumn: A Dirge
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AUTUMN: A DIRGE
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]
I.
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 is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying. 5
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year, 10
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
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 is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying. 5
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year, 10
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
II.
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 15
To his dwelling.
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black and gray;
Let your light sisters play—
Ye, follow the bier 20
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
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 15
To his dwelling.
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black and gray;
Let your light sisters play—
Ye, follow the bier 20
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.