In the Prime of Fall
In the Prime of Fall - meaning Summary
Letting Go in Autumn
The poem stages a quiet autumn scene—golden birch grove silent, cranes departing—used to reflect the speaker’s solitude and passage from youth to maturity. He rejects nostalgia and declares no regret for lost days or spent passions. Nature’s persistence (rowan’s color, grass under heat) contrasts with human transience; his words of sorrow drop like leaves, to be swept away by time. The closing thought accepts that life’s chatter ends in its season, but without bitterness. The poem is about acceptance of change, mortality, and the fading of youthful vitality.
Read Complete AnalysesThe golden birch-tree grove has fallen silent it's merry chatter having stopped afore, the cranes up there flying over, sullen, have nobody to pity any more. Whom should they pity? Each is just a trotter. One comes and goes and leaves for good again. The moon and hempen bush above the water remember all those perished, filled with pain. I'm standing on the plain all on my own, the cranes, the wind is taking them away, I think about my boyhood which has flown, and I do not regret my bygones anyway. I don't regret the days that I discarded, I don't feel sorry for the lilac of my soul. The purple rowan burning in the garden can't warm and comfort anyone at all. The rowan will maintain its coloration. The grass exposed to heat will not decease, I drop my words of sorrow and vexation the way a tree drops quietly its leaves. And if some day the wind of time intended to rake them all up in a useless roll... You ought to say: the golden grove has ended it's lovely chatter in the prime of fall.
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