Someone asked me recently what my favorite season is and why. I responded that my favorite time of year is autumn partly because it has the best poems.

My favorites are Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley, My November Guest and October by Robert Frost, and a few by Emily Dickinson as well as Christina Rossetti, Saigyo, and the many haiku of Basho. There are others, too, but I can't remember them at the moment. Maybe they'll come to me later.

Lovely suggestions--and more highly regarded from a literary standpoint, to be sure. I hope it's not wrong to like some of the old American favorites whose reputation has been demoted since their glory days. Another that occurred to me was James Whitcomb Riley's "When the Frost is on the Punkin". The Hoosier Poet was still taught in my elementary school days.

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" - I love the autumn, but here in Texas, it takes a while to get here.... I miss the English autumnal months - the mist, the cooling temperatures, the crisp air....

I hope it's not wrong to like some of the old American favorites whose reputation has been demoted since their glory days.It's certainly not wrong! Not in mind, at least. I love the dialect and the rhythm of "When the Frost is on the Punkin." And speaking of James Whitcomb Riley, it's always about this time of year that I recall "Little Orphant Annie" -- An' the gobble-uns'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out.

And I like Thomas Hood for the darker days of autumn:
NOVEMBER

No sun--no moon--no morn--no noon,
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day,
No warmth--no cheerfulness--no heatlthful ease,
No road, no street, no t'other side the way,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterfiles, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November!

Also, his:
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence.

I don't get to enjoy actual autumn very much anymore, but it is still my favorite season when I think about it.

Ode to Autumn by John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossÂd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has oÂer-brimmÂd their clammy cells.

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-reapÂd furrow sound asleep,
DrowsÂd 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.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,Â
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.

Ginny12, I have one book of poetry that has several autumn poems by poets who are mostly unknown to me since, as you say, they are no longer in their glory days. The poems, though, are truly little treasures.

This one has shown up on two totally unrelated sites that I visit each day. There's a message in that, so I am going for the trifecta:

October's Party
by George Cooper

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best;
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

Then, in the rustic hollow,
At hide-and-seek they played,
The party closed at sundown,
And everybody stayed.
Professor Wind played louder;
They flew along the ground;
And then the party ended
In jolly "hands around."

Autumn is my very favorite time of year. I don't think I could bear to live anywhere but New England simply because of the fall colors and the inexplicable quality of the autumn air.

These are two poems that have been posted here in past years that I liked very much.

October
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

OCTOBER is the treasurer of the year,
And all the months pay bounty to her store:
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
And fill her brimming coffers more and more.
But she, with youthful lavishness,
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.
She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,
But smiles and sings her happy life along;
She only sees above a shining sky;
She only hears the breezes' voice in song.
Her garments trail the woodland through,
And gather pearls of early dew
That sparkle till the roguish Sun
Creeps up and steals them every one.
But what cares she that jewels should be lost,
When all of Nature's bounteous wealth is hers?
Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,
Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,
She lives her life out joyously,
Nor cares when Frost stalks o'er her way
And turns her auburn locks to gray.

"God's World"
Edna St. Vincent Millay

O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,ÂLord, I do fear
ThouÂst made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,Âlet fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

AutumnÂoverlooked my Knitting - 748

AutumnÂoverlooked my KnittingÂ
DyesÂsaid HeÂhave IÂ
Could disparage a FlamingoÂ
Show Me themÂsaid IÂ

CochinealÂI choseÂfor deeming
It resemble TheeÂ
And the little BorderÂDuskerÂ
For resembling MeÂ

Emily Dickinson

Autumn Movement

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,
and the old things go, not one lasts.

Carl Sandburg

I am very fond of this poet and love this poem especially the final line;-

The Burning of the Leaves by Laurence Binyon

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves,
They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke
Wandering slowly into the weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
The last hollyhockÂs fallen tower is dust:
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost.
Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.
Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before,
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there:
Let them go to the fire with never a look behind.
That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.
They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

Always my favorite season, since childhood, when the opening of the school year meant new beginnings. Here in Tidewater, we often do not get our best leaf colors until November, quite a bit later than some of the rest of the country.

Here is a different take on fall, from the far East:

Clear After Rain

by Tu Fu, translated by Kenneth Rexroth.

"Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain.
The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
The mountain pears are tiny, but ripe.
A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
A single wild goose climbs into the void."