11 Most Beautiful Poems Dedicated to Autumn

In anticipation of the autumn equinox, which this year falls on Saturday, September 23, let's discover the best poems dedicated to this melancholic and irresistibly symbolic season of life's transience.

Autumn is perhaps the most poetic and pictorial of the four seasons; in its movements, its changing colors, its epiphanic suspensions of light, everything is an invitation to melancholy, anticipation, and enchantment.

Twilights, dancing leaves, first rains, nostalgia. The autumn season invites us to contemplation, reflection, and the warm intimacy of domestic quiet; it is a state of mind and, at the same time, a profound reflection on life and the fleeting nature of days.

In honor of autumn, poets have improvised as painters, attempting to capture in words the colorful foliage of the trees, the bubbling vats, the tart smell of wine, the fiery red of the sunset sky before the dark evenings descend.

The words of the greatest poets and writers bring us vivid and colorful images of autumn, but not only that: they also offer us poignant and profound reflections on death, melancholy, the emptiness and impermanence of all things.

Nature has been one of the greatest inspirations for literature throughout time. In the following list, you can find poems that reflect on autumn, whether as a season of change, a metaphor for the passage of time, or as an opportunity to seize life.

Having made this necessary premise, useful for introducing the most recurring themes and similarities, let's discover all the most beautiful poems about autumn. 

The fog rises, drizzling, on the rugged hills,
and under the mistral the sea howls and turns white;
but through the streets of the village the bitter smell of the wines goes
from the bubbling vats to cheer the souls.

The spit turns on the burning logs, crackling:
the hunter stands at the door, whistling, watching.
among the reddish clouds flocks of black birds, like exiled thoughts, migrate in the evening.

Gentle autumn, I possess myself and bend to your waters to drink the sky, sweet escape of trees and abysses.
The bitter pain of birth finds me joined to you and in you I break and heal:
poor fallen thing that the earth picks up.

What is happening to you, to your life, my only friend, my pale bride?
Your beauty becomes painful, and you no longer resemble the flowers.
You say: "It's autumn, it's the season in sight,
so cheerful that it hurts my heart." You say—and your voice captivates me with a familiar enchantment—
"Don't you see that tree over there in the garden, that still hasn't died, where every leaf that remains is a ruby?
For a woman, my friend, what a shock autumn is! At each of its returns, you know that, ever since I was a child, I have cried."
You say nothing else to those who live beside you, to those who live off you, of the pain you hide from them; and they wonder if ever again, soul, where and for what, you will blossom again.

It's like the leaves on the trees
in autumn.

At the falling of the leaves, the old housewife's heart does not cry, as it does our wretched ones,
for the farmyard is full of witty roosters;
and often, in the morning light,
she hears the calls of the helpful hens:
the granary is packed, the wine sings in the vat,
starlings sing around her in the evening,
the blossoming girls, thoughtful eyes,
while the corn unfurls; the urchins
frolic in the noisy husks.

Season of mists and soft abundance,
You, intimate friend of the sun at his height,
Who conspire with him to make heavy and blessed with grapes
The vines that hang from the thatched eaves of the roofs,
You who make the mossy trees of the cottage bend under the apples,
And fill every fruit with ripeness to the core;
You who swell the pumpkin and round with a sweet seed
The hazelnut shells and still make
late flowers bloom for the bees, deceiving them
That the days of heat will never end
Because summer has filled their slimy cells:
Who has never seen you, immersed in your riches?
Those who seek you can sometimes find you,
sitting carefree in the threshing floor,
your hair lifted by the sieve of the wind.

My dream is not in the
smoky, wine-soaked autumn, found
only in the calendars or in the fairs
of the Barbanera, it is not in its black
lightning evenings, it is not in the
harvest or liturgical processions, it is not in the cry of the peacocks,
it is not in the round of the oil mills, it is not in the clogging
of the larva and the dormouse.

The long sobs of autumn violins
they tear my heart with a monotonous languor.
Full of breath and tired, when the hour strikes
I remember distant days and I cry.
And I abandon myself to the sad wind that carries me
here and there like a dead leaf.

Autumn. We already felt it coming
in the August wind, in the torrential, weeping
September rains, and a shiver ran through the earth, which now, bare and sad, welcomed a lost sun.
Now the best time of our lives passes and declines, in this autumn that advances
with unspeakable slowness, and bids us a long farewell.

Already the fragrant olive oil in the gardens
of bitterness stings us: the lake
retreats a little from us, revealing a shore
of arid things,
broken oars, torn nets.
And the wind that lights the vineyards
already turns these regions, haunted by a dubious, teeming summer, to days still.
In the already certain death, we will walk with more courage,
we will wade slowly with the dogs
in the rolling wave.

Oh wild West Wind, breath of autumn's essence,
You, from whose invisible presence are swept
The dead leaves, like ghosts fleeing from a sorcerer,
Yellow and black and pale and red with fever,
Multitudes stricken by plague: oh you,
Who bear in your chariot the winged seeds.
To their dark winter beds, where they lie in the cold
And deep, each like a corpse in the grave,
Till thy blue sister, Spring, shall sound
Her trumpet o'er the sleeping earth, and fill
Bringing sweet buds like flocks to feed in the air
With bright odors and hues the plains and hills:
Wild spirit, who moves everywhere;
Destroyer and protector, listen, listen!

Let the leaves fall, let the flowers die,
the nights are long and the days are short,
every leaf floating from the autumn trees speaks to me of happiness,
I will smile when wreaths of snow
bloom where once the rose was,
I will sing when a dying night
presses a darker day.

On this autumn night
I am filled with your words
words eternal like time
like matter
words heavy like the hand
sparkling like the stars.

From your head, from your flesh,
from your heart, your words reached me,
your words full of you, your words, mother, your words, love, your words, friend.
They were sad,
they were happy when they were bitter, they were courageous when they were full of hope,
your words were heroic
when they were men.

But where are you going,
poor yellow leaves
like carefree butterflies?
Do you come from far away or near,
from a forest or a garden?
And don't you feel the melancholy
of the wind itself carrying you away?

On the threshold of autumn in a silent sunset
discover the wave of time and your secret surrender
like a light falling of birds from branch to branch
whose wings can no longer support them.

Behold in me that time of year
When yellow leaves, few or none, hang
From those branches trembling against the cold,
Naked choirs in ruins, where the birds once sang sweetly.
In me you see the twilight of a day
that after sunset fades in the west
and is gradually swallowed up by the dark night,
shadow of that life that confines all in peace.

The mornings are milder, the walnuts grow darker,
and the berries have a rounder face.
The rose is no longer in the city.
The maple wears a more cheerful scarf.
The countryside a scarlet skirt.
And I too, so as not to be old-fashioned,
will put on a jewel.

Here it is autumn.
A darker green, more yellow and red,
the trees make the villages fresh and sweet,
their leaves fluttering in a gentle breeze.
Apples hang ripe in the orchards, grapes
hang from the trellises
Do you smell the aroma of the grapes on the vines?
Do you smell the buckwheat where the bees were buzzing?
The sky opens above everything,
so clear and calm after the rain, and with wonderful clouds;
below, too, everything is calm, full of life, beautiful;
the farm is in bloom.

Let's take advantage of autumn
before winter scorches us.
Let's jostle into the sun's rays
and admire the birds migrating
now that it warms our hearts,
even if only for a moment. And little by little,
let's think and feel
with the old affection we still have. Let's
take advantage of autumn
before the future freezes
and there's no room for beauty
because the future turns to frost.