Dear readers: I hope you are all having a wonderful fall. Please see some poems below that help embrace the season.

“The Wild Swans at Coole” by William Butler Yeats

“The trees are in their autumnal beauty, / The forest paths are dry, / Under the October twilight the water / Reflects a still sky; / On the overflowing water among the stones / Are fifty-nine swans. / The nineteenth autumn has come upon me / Since I made my first count; / I saw, before I had quite finished, / All of them suddenly rise / And disperse, turning in great broken rings / On their noisy wings… / But now they drift on the calm water, / Mysterious, beautiful ; / Among what reeds will they build, / By what lake or pond / Will delight the eyes of men when I wake one day / To find that they have flown away?

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

“Nature’s first green is gold, / Its hardest hue to remember. / Its first leaf is a flower; / But only an hour. / Then the leaf disappears into a leaf. / So Eden sank into sorrow, / So the dawn descends to day. / Nothing of gold can remain.

“Sonnet 73” by William Shakespeare

“This time of year you can see in me / When the yellow leaves, or none, or few, hang / On these branches that tremble in the cold, / Bare ruined choirs, where the sweet birds sang late. / In me you see the twilight of such a day / As after the sunset fades in the west, / Which little by little the dark night takes away, / The second self of death, which seals everything in the rest. / In me you see such a fire shining / That rests on the ashes of his youth, / Like the deathbed on which he must expire, / Consumed by that on which he nourished. / You perceive it, which makes your love stronger, / To love this good that you must leave before long.

“End of October” by Maya Angelou

“Only lovers / see the fall / a signal of the end of endings / a gruff gesture alerting / those who will not be alarmed / that we are beginning to stop / to start again / again.”

“When you are old” by William Butler Yeats

“When you are old and gray and full of sleep, / And nodding your head by the fire, take this book, / And read slowly, and dream of the gentle look / Your eyes once had, and their deep shadows; / How many have loved your moments of happy grace, / And loved your beauty with false or true love, / But only one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the pains of your changing face; / And leaning close to the bars of light, / Whispers, a little sadly, how Love fled / And paced the mountains above / And hid his face amid a host of stars.

Annie Lane’s Second Anthology: “How Can I Forgive My Cheating Partner?” » — is out now! Visit for more information. Send your questions to Annie Lane at [email protected].