Part 3 — AUTUMN: A DIRGE
Reading edition
The warm sun is failing; the bleak wind is wailing; The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers are dying; And the Year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, From November to May; In your saddest array Follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling; the nipped worm is crawling; The rivers are swelling; the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play— Ye, follow the bier Of the dead, cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear.
Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822]