I speak this poem now with grave and level voice <br />In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall. <br /> <br />I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall <br />Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise. <br /> <br />I praise the fall: it is the human season. <br />Now <br />No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth, <br />Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth, <br />Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough, <br /> <br />But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows <br />Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone: <br />There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn <br />Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes. <br /> <br />Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves <br />And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow <br />We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know <br />The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves. <br /> <br />It is the human season. On this sterile air <br />Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on. <br />I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone. <br />I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.<br /><br />Archibald MacLeish<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/immortal-autumn/
