Autumn: a Dirge by Percy Bysshe Shelley
As sunlight weakens, flowers die and cold rain falls, the year is pictured as a woman on her deathbed beneath dead leaves. The speaker calls on the months to dress in mourning, follow her bier and weep over her grave.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Elegiac Poetry, Nature Poetry · 224 words
First lines
1.
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.
2.
Genres
- Elegiac Poetry — The year is mourned through images of a deathbed, bier, sepulchre and tears over a grave.
- Nature Poetry — Fading sunlight, dying flowers, swelling rivers and departing swallows mark the season's decline.
Tags
autumn · seasonal change · mourning · rain · personification
What this Textopian page supports
Autumn: a Dirge is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Elegiac Poetry, Nature Poetry
- Length: 224 words
- Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)
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- Work identity for Autumn: a Dirge by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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