Dear Annie: I hope you are all having a beautiful fall. Please check out some poems that help embrace the season.

“Wild Swans at Coole” by William Butler Yeats

“Trees in autumn beauty, / Woodland paths are dry, / Water under the October twilight / Mirrors of a still sky; / On the overflowing water between the stones / There are fifty-nine swans. / The nineteenth autumn has come upon me / Since I made my first count; / I saw, before I had finished, / They all rise at once / And in great broken circles they spin / On their noisy wings … / But now they drift on the still water, / Mysterious, beautiful; / Among what reeds will they build, / By what lake or pool / Will the eyes of the people who will make me happy when I wake up one day / To find they have flown away?”

“Nothing Gold Remains” by Robert Frost

“Nature’s first green is gold, / Its hardest shade to hold. / Its early leaf is a flower; / But only an hour. / Then the leaf turns into a leaf. / So Eden is overcome with grief, / So the dawn sinks into the sun. / Nothing gold remains.”

“Sonnet 73” by William Shakespeare

“You can see that time of year in me / When yellow leaves or no or very few leaves hang / Over branches shivering with cold / Over bare ruined choirs where sweet birds sing in the late hours. / You see in me the twilight of such a day / As if fading in the west after sunset, / Little by little the black night takes it away, / The alter ego of death seals everything in peace. / You see a fire shining within me / That lies on the ashes of your youth / Like a death bed on which it will end / Consumed by what it feeds on. / You perceive this, which makes your love stronger / To love well that which you must soon abandon.”

“End of October” by Maya Angelou

“Only lovers / see the fall / the signal of endings / a firm gesture that warns / those who will not panic / that we begin to stop / to begin again / again.”

“When You’re Old” by William Butler Yeats

“When you are old and gray and sleepy, / And nodding your head by the fire, take this book, / And read slowly and imagine the soft look / Once upon a time of your eyes and their deep shadows; / How many have loved the happy moments of your grace, / And loved your beauty with false or true love, / But one man has loved the wandering soul within you, / And loved the pains of your changing face; / And leaning by the glistening bars, / He mutters, a little sadly, How love fled / And he moved towards the mountains above / And hid his face in a crowd of stars.”

“How Can I Forgive My Cheating Partner?” It’s out now! Annie Lane’s second anthology of her favorite columns on marriage, infidelity, communication, and compromise is available in paperback and e-book. Visit for more information. Send questions to Annie Lane at: [email protected].

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