Fall Poetry: Frost + St. Vincent Millay

Autumn Chant

                       Edna St. Vincent Millay

Now the autumn shudders

  In the rose's root.

Far and wide the ladders

  Lean among the fruit.

Now the autumn clambers

  Up the trellised frame,

And the rose remembers

  The dust from which it came.

Brighter than the blossom

  On the rose's bough

Sits the wizened, orange,

  Bitter berry now;

Beauty never slumbers;

  All is in her name;

But the rose remembers

  The dust from which it came.

Unharvested

                       Robert Frost

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.

And come to leave the routine road

And look for what had made me stall,

There sure enough was an apple tree

That had eased itself of its summer load,

And of all but its trivial foliage free,

Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.

For there had been an apple fall

As complete as the apple had given man.

The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!

May much stay out of our stated plan,

Apples or something forgotten and left,

So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.