The Burning of the Leaves

Fingers of fire make corruption clean on Mitcham Common, 18th November, 2020.

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke
Wandering slowly into a 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 hollyhock’s 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;
Sparks 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.
The 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.

from ‘The Burning of the Leaves’ by Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)

Season of Mists

        It is a time of year that’s to my taste,
        Full of spiced rumours, sharp and velutinous flavours,
        Dim with the mist that softens the cruel surfaces,
        Makes mirrors vague.  It is the mist that I most favour. 

from ‘Autumn’ by Vernon Scannell (1922–2007)

 

Fanfare for Allhallowstide

Fresco of the Communion of Saints at the Baptistery in Padua, Italy. © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

     How shall we pilgrims keep the law of love?
  How shall we follow where the Lord has led?
  The saints know how: they point the way ahead;
  They watch the road to Heaven from above.

  The saints were young or old; were great or small;
  However they were called, one thing they knew:
  Whatever works of woe the world may do,
  The Lord shall never let the faithful fall.

  So we on earth, we should be saints as well;
  It is us pilgrims whom the saints invite
  To blaze with love; to set the world alight;
  To join them in the joy in which they dwell.

  As we must one day die, they also died,
  But live now as we hope we too shall live.
  To all our friends in Heaven let us give
  Our joyful greetings at Allhallowstide!