Autumn

[Image: Peter de Wint]

Summer is gone & all the merry noise

Of busy harvest in its labouring glee
The shouts of toil the laughs of gleaning boys
Sweeing at dinner hours on willow tree
The cracking whip the scraps of homely song
Sung by the boys that drive the loaded wain
The noise of geese that haste & hiss along
For corn that litters in the narrow lane
Torn from the waggon by the hedge row trees
Tinkles of wetting scythes amid the grain
The bark of dogs stretched at their panting ease
Watching the stouk were mornings dinner lay
All these have past & silence at her ease
Dreams autumns mellancholly life away

Selected Poems of John Clare (1964)

Leonard Clark (ed)