Autumn: A Dirge

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Teacher card

Published: 1820, in The Complete Poetical Works
Length: 22 lines, 131 words, 1 word in 131 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: autumn, wind
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,And the YearOn the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,Is lying.Come, Months, come away,From November to May,In your saddest array;Follow the bierOf the dead cold Year,And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knellingFor the Year;The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each goneTo his dwelling;Come, Months, come away;Put on white, black, and gray;Let your light sisters play—Ye, follow the bierOf the dead cold Year,And make her grave green with tear on tear.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (died 1822), The Complete Poetical Works (1820), lines 38472–38495 of Project Gutenberg ebook #4800. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 22 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#sh-autumn

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/shelley-autumn-a-dirge · popplepoetry.com