Autumn

The thistle-down's flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You've captured the sense of motion, but not quite the intensity of heat which I read from this, one of my favourite Clare poems. The form of the leaves is also impressed upon my mind, yet removed from the essential idea of landscape I have from reading the poem. Please know that these impressions are limited by not having experienced for myself a Northamptonshire Autumn.
From Aaron (an English Literature student in Melbourne, Australia).

Arborfield said...

Hi Aaron... VERY nice to hear from you. Yes, the idea of 'heat' in Aussie is rather different from a Helpston Autumn... which tends to be windy and cool. Not to say that it cannot be hot of course, but 'hot' to us would be anything above 20-degrees!

Regards...