Such principles are most absurd,—
  I care not who first taught ‘em;
There’s nothing known to beast or bird
  To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn times, when grief holds sway
  With countenance distressing,
You’ll note the more of black and gray
  Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;
  The sky is blue and mellow;
And e’en the grasses turn the ground
  From modest green to yellow.

The seed burs all with laughter crack
  On featherweed and jimson;
And leaves that should be dressed in black
  Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;
  A singing bird comes after;
And Nature, all from earth to sky,
  Is bubbling o’er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,
  Like sparkling little lasses;
The sunlight runs along the hills,
  And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun
  It really can’t contain it;
And streams of mirth so freely run
  The heavens seem to rain it.

Don’t talk to me of solemn days
  In autumn’s time of splendor,
Because the sun shows fewer rays,
  And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it’s the climax of the year,—
  The highest time of living!—
Till naturally its bursting cheer
  Just melts into thanksgiving.

–Paul Laurence Dunbar

II
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

–John Keats