November 2006: Autumn - Associations with melancholy

Autumn in poetry has often been associated with melancholy. The possibilities of summer are gone, and the chill of winter is on the horizon. Thoughts and skies turn to grey. Rainer Maria Rilke, a famous German-language poet, has expressed such sentiments in one of his most famous poems, Herbsttag (Autumn Day), which reads in part:

Who now has no house, will not build one (anymore).
Who now is alone, will remain so for long,
will wake, and read, and write long letters
and back and forth on the boulevards
will restlessly wander, while the leaves blow.

We might also think of Yeats' poem 'The Wild Swans at Coole' where the maturing season that the poet observes symbolically represents the poet's ageing self. Like the natural world that he observes he too has reached his prime and now must look forward to the inevitability of old age and death. Paul Verlaine's "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") is likewise characterized by strong, painful feelings of sorrow.