The Pity of the Leaves
A vengeful November wind sweeps across cold moors and through lonely corridors, carrying ancestral shame and echoing with shrieks. An old man hears voices from the past, spoken by lips that can speak no more, and their remembered force shakes him like footsteps on old floors. Outside, brown, thin leaves skip and whisper over the stones, tormenting him with their deadness. When he cries out, they flutter away like withered human souls.
By Edwin Arlington Robinson · First published 1897 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Gothic Poetry, Dark Romanticism · 147 words
First lines
VENGEFUL across the cold November moors, / Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, / Reverberant through lonely corridors.
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,
Words out of lips that were no more to speak -
What this Textopian page supports
The Pity of the Leaves is listed on Textopian as a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, dated 1897 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Date: 1897 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Gothic Poetry, Dark Romanticism, Psychological Poetry, Supernatural Poetry
- Length: 147 words
- Structure: 1 section, 12 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Pity of the Leaves by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — A concise, highly musical poem that emphasizes atmosphere, emotional resonance, imagery, and the speaker's perception rather than narrative plot.
- Gothic Poetry — Its desolate moors, ancestral shame, haunted corridors, spectral voices, dead footsteps, and oppressive November setting employ central Gothic conventions.
- Dark Romanticism — The poem treats nature as hostile and spiritually charged, while dwelling on isolation, guilt, mortality, decay, and the troubled inner life of its old man.
- Psychological Poetry — The apparently supernatural sounds and voices may reflect the old man's anguish, memory, fear, and consciousness of death, making subjective mental experience central.
Tags
poetry · American literature · modernism · lyric poetry · melancholy · mortality · nature · autumn · loss · isolation · human suffering · reflection