"yield a song to the decaying year"

Now I am minded to take pipe in hand

And yield a song to the decaying year;

Now while the full-leaved hursts unalter’d stand,

And scarcely does appear

The Autumn yellow feather in the boughs

            While there is neither sun nor rain;

And a grey heaven does the hush’d earth house,

And bluer grey the flocks of trees look in the plain.

So late the hoar green chestnut breaks a bud,

And feeds new leaves upon the winds of Fall;

So late there is not force in sap or blood;

The fruit against the wall

Loose on the stem has done its summering;

These should have starv’d with the green broods of spring,

Or never been at all;

Too late or else much, much too soon,

Who first knew moonlight by the hunters’ moon.

Gerard Manley Hopkins*


Vines, Paul Ranson, 1902



*[105], The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oxford University Press, 4th ed. I should have posted this one about a month ago to suit the season here, but I thought it was too beautiful to leave until next year. By the way, a "hurst" is a thicket or bramble. I had to look it up.