Season's Cornation Day (Italian Sonnet) Poem by Susan Crowe

Beneath the pale sun's melancholy ray
a tearful empress lays her garland down,
relinquishing her fragrance of renown,
where blossoms left on each abandoned spray
are strewn like flags o'er Coronation Day.
An auburn rival will usurp her crown,
assume her royal throne and queenly gown,
then lead her where awakened vultures play.

The grand procession winds along the square
where nimbly darts a joyous cymbal's flame.
'Yet, Autumn, what is in the urn you bear?
Perchance the ashes of a maid's last prayer
whose grief is now your ornament of shame?
... Such hell you pay for slaying Summer's heir! '


[An Italian sonnet is composed of an octave, rhyming abbaabba, and a sestet, rhyming cdecde or cdcdcd, or in some variant pattern such as cdccdc, but with no closing couplet. A sonnet's meter is iambic pentameter.]