September Poem by Helen Hunt Jackson
September
1 The golden-rod is yellow;
2 The corn is turning brown;
3 The trees in apple orchards
4 With fruit are bending down.
5 The gentian's bluest fringes
6 Are curling in the sun;
7 In dusty pods the milkweed
8 Its hidden silk has spun.
9 The sedges flaunt their harvest,
10 In every meadow nook;
11 And asters by the brook-side
12 Make asters in the brook,
13 From dewy lanes at morning
14 The grapes' sweet odors rise;
15 At noon the roads all flutter
16 With yellow butterflies.
17 By all these lovely tokens
18 September days are here,
19 With summer's best of weather,
20 And autumn's best of cheer.
21 But none of all this beauty
22 Which floods the earth and air
23 Is unto me the secret
24 Which makes September fair.
25 'T is a thing which I remember;
26 To name it thrills me yet:
27 One day of one September
28 I never can forget.
My mother's favorite poem also. She and my father got married in September. Sadly, it was also the month in which she died. So for me this poem is bittersweet.
My third grade class memorized this poem in 1955. My teacher left off the last eight lines. Perhaps she thought the "secret" of that September day was something third graders didn't need to know about.
4th grade 1948 Baltimore, Md. Each student was required to stand up by his or her desk and recite the poem of the week from memory. This is one of my favorites. Perhaps others with similarly remember an annual commemoration of WW I with the poignant words of " In Flanders Fields." I now suspect that some of my teachers may have lost loved ones in that and the subsequent great calamity, something that never, of course, touched my awareness at the time.
It relates back to line 23 and 24. She is remembering the thing that she is keeping a secret, and it (the secret) is the thing above all others mentioned that make September fair.
Assigned to learn this poem 52 years ago in fourth grade, I'm pleased that my memory still holds the beautiful words of this poem and the sensations it brings up in me.
2nd grade...Blackstone Mass.....1946.....Miss Murphy..Lincoln School........this is the poem that haunts me still...I am now approaching 80 and as I fly fish a New England creek.......the rhyme echos in my ears.......The golden rod is yellow has found my nose and eyes.....but the sedges hatching.....still cause the speckled trout to turn into dinner....
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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12/1/2024 2:54:56 PM # 1.0.0
My mother Wilma Foster loved this poem and recited it every September even though she was blind the last ten years of her life. We read this poem at her funeral.
We read this at my dad's funeral last week. He was 100!