101 Poems, Number 29

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

29: “Autumn Song,” March 1936, by W. H. Auden (1907–73)

“Now the leaves are falling fast”—

And so begins these Auden lines

That swoop me back into the past,

These lines about a season’s signs.

His images—of change, of graves,

Of trolls, of different sorts of birds—

Roll over us like ocean waves—

These combers formed of perfect words.

It’s cycles that he writes about—

In all our lives here on this earth.

We all are on the human route—

What ends with death begins with birth.

Link to poem.