It is autumn; not without But within me is the cold. Youth and spring are all about; It is I that have grown old.
Birds are darting through the air, Singing, building without rest; Life is stirring everywhere, Save within my lonely breast.
There is silence: the dead leaves Fall and rustle and are still; Beats no flail upon the sheaves, Comes no murmur from the mill.
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📖 About this poem
Longfellow flips the usual autumn poem on its head here. Instead of the outside world going gray while the speaker stays untouched, it's the reverse: spring is everywhere, birds are nesting and singing, life is loud and busy, and yet the coldness belongs entirely to him. That gap between an eager, blooming world and a tired heart is the whole poem.
The music is simple and steady, short lines, plain rhymes, nothing fussy, which makes the sadness feel quiet rather than dramatic. The strongest image comes at the end, not spring at all but a kind of borrowed autumn stillness: dead leaves falling and going silent, no flail beating grain, no murmur from the mill. Work and harvest have stopped, and that hush stands in for his own inner quiet.
It still lands because most people know that feeling, everyone else seems fine and busy while you're carrying something heavier inside, unnoticed.
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