Print #25: Misty Yellow Tree

The road, curving in a perfect arc, is covered with the mystery of the morning mist. The autumn yellow-green leaves break the subdued colors of this misty day. The dark brown colors of the bark and pine needles collecting at the base of this glamorous tree take in the stillness of this dreamlike autumn scene.

Inspirational Poems

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;--
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.
By Thomas Hood

Ode - Autumn.

Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating;
Winking at the blushing trees,
And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease,
Of the southward flying swallow
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden Autumn days.

By Will Carleton

Autumn Days

OPEN the door now.
Go roll up the collar of your coat
To walk in the changing scarf of mist.

Tell your sins here to the pearl fog
And know for once a deepening night
Strange as the half-meanings
Alurk in a wise woman’s mousey eyes.

Yes, tell your sins
And know how careless a pearl fog is
Of the laws you have broken

Pearl Fog
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.

Fairyland

Do you remember that careless band,
Riding o’er meadow and wet sea-sand,
One autumn day, in a mist of sunshine,
Joyously seeking for fairyland?

The wind in the tree-tops was scarcely heard,
The streamlet repeated its one silver word,
And far away, o’er the depths of woodland,
Floated the bell of the parson-bird.

Pale hoar-frost glittered in shady slips,
Where ferns were dipping their finger-tips;
From mossy branches a faint perfume
Breathed o’er honeyed clematis lips.

At last we climbed to the ridge on high.
Ah, crystal vision! Dreamland nigh!
Far, far below us the wide Pacific
Slumbered in azure from sky to sky.

And cloud and shadow across the deep
Wavered, or paused in enchanted sleep,
And eastward the purple-misted islets
Fretted the wave with terrace and steep.

We looked on the tranquil, glassy bay,
On headlands sheeted with dazzling spray,
And the whitening ribs of a wreck forlorn
That for twenty years had wasted away.

All was as calm, and pure, and fair,
It seemed the hour of worship there,
Silent, as where the great North Minster
Rises for ever, a visible prayer.

Then we turned from the murmurous forest-land,
And rode over shingle and silver sand,
For so fair was the earth in the golden autumn,
We sought no farther for Fairyland.

By Anne Glenny Wilson
Walter Murdoch (1874–1970).
The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.