Poetry Sunday: October by Robert Frost

We've been having very mild and pleasant weather over the past week. It's almost as if fall is actually here.

October is, in fact, right near the top of my favorite months list. It is generally a time of mild days and relatively cool nights. The temperature actually got down to 59 degrees Fahrenheit one night last week. 

Robert Frost celebrated such days in this poem which he titled, simply, "October"; the days seem all too brief and we long for them to linger, and in the early morning the sun is shrouded by a "gentle mist." It will be many weeks yet until our leaves are "burnt with frost." We will enjoy October while we can. Maybe even into November.

October

by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

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