Autumn

There is something about the Autumn that makes one crave sweaters, cloudy days, warm apple cider, and poetry.  So to usher in the Fall I have found some sweet melancholy poems that drift slowly down the page as leaves fall from the trees.

Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automne”

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne

Blessent mon cœur

D’une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

Sonne l’heure.

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens,

Et je pleure.

Et je m’en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m’emporte

De çà, de là,

Pareil à la

Feuille morte.

 

 

(The long sobs of the violins of Autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor. 

 

 Stifling everything, and wan, when the hour sounds, I recall the old days and I weep. 

 

And I depart with the ill wind that carries me away, now here, now there, just like a dead leaf)

 

 

Goethe’s “Herbstgefühl” (“Autumn Emotion”)

 

Fetter grüne, du Laub,

Am Rebengeländer

Hier mein Fenster herauf!

Gedrängter quellet,

Zwillingsbeeren, und reifet

Schneller und glänzend voller!

Euch brütet der Mutter Sonne

Scheideblick, euch umsäuselt

Des holden Himmels

Fruchtende Fülle;

Euch kühlet des Mondes

Freundlicher Zauberhauch,

Und euch betauen, ach!

Aus diesen Augen

Der ewig belebenden Liebe

Voll schwellende Tränen.

(A fuller green, you leaves, up here to my window, along the grape trellis! Swell more crowdedly, indistinguishable berries, and ripen more quickly and more fully gleaming! On you broods the mother sun’s parting glance, all around you rustles the lovely sky’s fruitful abundance; you are cooled by the moon’s kindly and magical breath, you are bedewed—ah!—by the tears overflowing from these eyes of eternally

enlivening love.)