Fall Poems

Raking Leaves

By: Shel Silverstein

I raked the leaves on our front lawn;

It took all afternoon

I started at ‘round half past one

And said “I’ll be done soon”

But once I saw how more leaves fall

Each time I make a pile,

I quickly saw this outdoor chore

Was going to take a while.

And so I did what my dad said,

A winner does to wire

I studied that great pile of leaves

And then I jumped right in.

Metamorphosis

By: Sylvia Plath

Haunched like a faun, he hooed

from grove of moon-glint and fen-frost

until all owls in the twigged forest

flapped black to look and brood

on the call this man made.

No sound but a drunken coot

lurching home along river bank;

stars hung water-sunk, so a rank

of double star-eyes lit

boughs where those owls sat,

An arena of yellow eyes

watched the changing shape he cut

saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout

goat-horns; marked how god rose

and galloped woodward in that guise

(An excerpt from) The Raven

By: Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, Distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore.