September 2025

Ode to the West Wind by P. B. Shelley 'O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes; O Thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear! '

This month we feature Autumn poems, Welsh poems and poems for the Life of this Planet

Autumn Poems on the Underground

Autumn Evening, Matsuo Basho ' Autumn evening- A crow on a bare branch'

from To Autumn, John Keats ' Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.'

from Autumn Journal, Louis MacNeice ‘September has come, it is hers Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace . . .’

from To Autumn by John Keats ' Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.'

from Mutabilitie by Edmund Spenser (1552-99) ' Then came the Autumne all in yellow clad, As though he joyed in his plentious store, Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad That he had banisht hunger, which to-fore Had by the belly oft him pinched sore. Upon his head a wreath that was enrold With eares of corne of every sort he bore: And in his hand a sickle he did holde, To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold. '

Harvestwoman, Fernando Pessoa ' But no, she's abstract, is a bird Of sound in the air of air soaring, And her soul sings unencumbered Because the song's what makes her sing.'

Elizabeth Bishop Song 'Summer is over upon the sea. The pleasure yacht, the social being, that danced on the endless polished floor, stepped and side-stepped like Fred Astaire, is gone, is gone, docked somewhere ashore. The friends have left, the sea is bare that was strewn with floating, fresh green weeds. Only the rusty-sided freighters go past the moon's marketless craters and the stars are the only ships of pleasure.'

In a Loaning by Seamus Heaney Spoken for in autumn, recovered speech Having its way again, I gave a cry: ‘Not beechen green, but these shin-deep coffers Of copper-fired leaves, these beech boles grey.’ Seamus Heaney Reprinted by permission of Faber from District and Circle (2006) Loaning: a lane (Ulster-Scots) boles: tree trunks

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 ,William Wordsworth 2013 Poems on the Underground poster 'Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty; This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!'

Distances, Philippe Jaccottet (b.1925) Translated by Derek Mahon 'Les distances Tournent les martinets dans les hauteurs de l' air: plus haut encore tournent les astres invisibles. Que le jour se retire aux extrémités de la terre, apparaîtront ces feux sur l' etendue de sombre sable… Ainsi nous habitons un domaine de mouvements et de distances; ainsi le coeur va de l' arbre à l' oiseau, de l' oiseau aux astres lointains, de l' astre à son amour. Ainsi l' amour dans la maison fermée s' accroît, tourne et travaille, serviteur des soucieux portant une lampe à la main. Swifts turn in the heights of the air; higher still turn the invisible stars. When day withdraws to the ends of the earth their fires shine on a dark expanse of sand. We live in a world of motion and distance. The heart flies from tree to bird, from bird to distant star, from star to love; and love grows in the quiet house, turning and working, servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand. '

Grasmere Journal, 1801, Sinéad Morrissey ‘A beautiful cloudless morning. My toothache better.’

Notes from a Tunisian Journal by Rita Dove This nutmeg stick of a boy in loose trousers! Little coffee pots in the coals, a mint on the tongue. The camels stand in all their vague beauty- at night they fold up like accordions. All the hedges are singing with yellow birds! A boy runs by with lemons in his hands. Food's perfume, breath is nourishment. The stars crumble, salt above eucalyptus fields.

Diary by Katrina Naomi 'Her diary the way the words hurry intoeachother and then apart- as the days and her body lost out I took the diary from her bedside did nothing else no sorting of clothes touched nothing of hers save the diary, reading how she wrote across days and off the edge of the page'

Note, Leanne O’Sullivan If we become separated from each other this evening try to remember the last time you saw me and go back and wait for me there.

Welsh Poems on the Underground

From Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas ‘Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,’

Mysteries, Dannie Abse ‘At night, I do not know who I am when I dream, when I am sleeping. Awakened, I hold my breath and listen: a thumbnail scratches the other side of the wall.’

Virtue, George Herbert 'Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright The bridal of the earth and sky: The dew shall weep thy fall tonight, For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eyes: Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie: My music shows ye have your closes, And all must die. Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal. Then chiefly lives.'

Six Bells, Gillian Clarke ‘Perhaps a woman hanging out the wash paused, hearing something, a sudden hush, a pulse inside the earth like a blow to the heart,’

Small Brown Job, Gwyneth Lewis ‘May you be led on all your walks By an unidentified bird Flitting ahead, at least one branch, The tease, between you And it. Is that an eyeStripe? Epaulette? Your desire For a name grows stronger.’

Swallows, Owen Sheers Poems on the Underground 2012 'The swallows are italic again, cutting their sky-jive between the telephone wires, flying in crossed lines. Their annual regeneration so flawless to human eyes that there is no seam between parent and child. Just always the swallows and their script of descenders, dipping their ink to sign their signatures across the page of the sky.'

The World by Henry Vaughan (1621-95) ' I saw Eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world And all her train were hurl'd... '

The Ancients of the World, R. S. Thomas 'The salmon lying in the depths of Llyn Llifon Secretly as a thought in a dark mind, Is not so old as the owl of Cwm Cowlyd Who tells her sorrow nightly on the wind. The ousel singing in the woods of Cilgwri, Tirelessly as a stream over the mossed stones, Is not so old as the toad of Cors Fochno Who feels the cold skin sagging round his bones. The toad and the ousel and the stag of Rhedynfre, That has cropped each leaf from the tree of life, Are not so old as the owl of Cwm Cowlyd, That the proud eagle would have to wife.'

Poems for the Life of this Planet

For the Life of This Planet, Grace Nichols ‘ The way the red sun surrenders its wholeness to curving ocean bit by bit. The way curving ocean gives birth to the birth of stars in the growing darkness, wearing everything in its path to cosmic smoothness’

Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) Poems on the Underground 1995 ' This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning ,It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and wilderness yet.' Poems on the Underground The British Library (Zweig Programme) London Arts Board .Design Tom Davidson.

African Poems on the Underground: Season, Wole Soyinka. Rust is ripeness, rust And the wilted corn- plume

Rainforest, Judith Wright 'The forest drips and glows with green. The tree-frog croaks his far off song. His voice is stillness, moss and rain drunk from the forest ages long.'

Sunrise Sequence from The Dulngulg Song cycle translated by Ronald M. Berndt 'The day breaks - the first rays of the rising Sun, stretching her arms. Daylight breaking, as the Sun rises to her feet. Sun rising, scattering the darkness; lighting up the land ... With disc shining, bringing daylight, as the birds whistle and call ... People are moving about, talking, feeling the warmth. Burning through the Gorge, she rises, walking westwards, Wearing her waist-band of human hair. She shines on the blossoming coolibah-tree, with its sprawling roots, Its shady branches spreading ... '

Poems from August 2025