Carl Sandburg

Autumn Movement

Autumn Movement - meaning Summary

Loss and Seasonal Renewal

The poem observes autumn as a movement between loss and renewal. The speaker mourns beautiful things that inevitably fade, using vivid seasonal images—fields, a sunburned woman as the year’s mother, northwest wind and early snow—to show how beauty is torn away. Rather than resolving into despair, the poem accepts cyclical change: old beauties vanish but new ones arrive with the season, underscoring impermanence and continuity.

Read Complete Analyses

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn, full of holes. New beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

default user
PoetryVerse just now

Feel free to be first to leave comment.

8/2200 - 0