The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear...

 My boy Rufus:

This is the year's despair: some wind last night

Utter'd too soon the irrevocable word,

And the leaves heard it, and the low clouds heard;

So a wan morning dawn'd of sterile light;

Flowers droop'd, or show'd a startled face and white;

The cattle cower'd, and one disconsolate bird

Chirp'd a weak note; last came this mist and blurr'd

The hills, and fed upon the fields like blight.

Ah, why so swift despair! There yet will be

Warm noons, the honey'd leavings of the year,

Hours of rich musing, ripest autumn's core,

And late-heap'd fruit, and falling hedge-berry,

Blossoms in cottage-crofts, and yet, once more,

A song, not less than June's, fervent and clear.

Edward Dowden, Later Autumn Song