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The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn. 

 Autumn, among her drooping marigolds 

 Keeps all her garnered sheaves, and empty folds, 

 And dripping orchards plundered and forlorn. 



Even Shakespeare shivers : 



That time of year . . . 



When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 

 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 



Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 



Tennyson is pathetic, but neither somber 

 nor gelid : 



Calm is the morn without a sound, 

 Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 

 And only through the faded leaf 



The chestnut pattering to the ground : 



Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 

 And on these dews that drench the furze, 

 And all the silvery gossamers 



That twinkle into green and gold. 



Of all odes to autumn, Keats's, I believe, is 

 most universally admired. This might almost 

 answer to our own fall of the leaf, and is far less 

 somber than many apostrophes to the season 

 that occur throughout English verse. Another 

 contemporaneous ode, though less generally ad- 

 mired, is, I think, equally fine and certainly 

 Stronger. Hood's is emphatically an ode to late 



