The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren...

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
  And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
  And the flowers that grow between.

“Shall I have naught that is fair?” saith he;
  “Have naught but the bearded grain?
Though the...

Prune thou thy words; the thoughts control
  That o’er thee swell and throng;—
They will condense within thy soul,
  And change to purpose strong.

But he who lets his feelings run
  In soft luxurious flow,
Shrinks when hard service must be done,...

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
  One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
  Stars, that in earth’s firmament do shine.

Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
  As astrologers and seers...

The Melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren...

I Will not have the mad Clytie,
  Whose head is turned by the sun;
The tulip is a courtly quean,
  Whom, therefore, I will shun:
The cowslip is a country wench,
  The violet is a nun;—
But I will woo the dainty rose,
  The queen of every...

Poet: Thomas Hood