Autumn Moon

Is the moon different in autumn?  I have no hard evidence, only inklings.  I am one of those who is lucky enough to have fond childhood memories of the sight and smell of piles of raked-up burning leaves.  Am I deceiving myself, or did a large yellow-orange waxing moon rise each year through the bare branches of the oaks and elms as the leaves smoldered up and down the block?  In 1964, for instance, the moon reached its first quarter on October 13 and was full on October 21.  The time frame fits.  Might this be a tantalizing clue?  Perhaps I am not imagining things.

Samuel Palmer, "Moonlight, a Landscape with Sheep" (c. 1831)

                    Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night --
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

T. E. Hulme, in A. R. Jones, The Life and Opinions of T. E. Hulme (1960).

As I have suggested before, wistfulness is an (the?) essential component of autumn.  Thus, "the wistful stars" (line 6) seems right.

Hulme wrote only a handful of poems (40 or so, by my count).  He is best known for the influence of his aesthetic and philosophic thoughts and writings on budding "modernists" such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.  On September 28, 1917, he was killed in Flanders by the blast from an artillery shell.  He was 34.

Samuel Palmer, "Shepherds under a Full Moon"

                    The Moon

There is such loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
Whom the first Adam saw.  The long centuries
Of human vigil have filled her
With ancient lament.  Look at her.  She is your mirror.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Willis Barnstone), Selected Poems (edited by Alexander Coleman) (Viking 1999).

Samuel Palmer, "Late Twilight"

As is often the case, Japanese and Chinese poets have a way of perfectly summing things up in a matter-of-fact and direct fashion.  But, as always, the calm surface covers deep depths.

     Down from the mountain,
The moon
     Accompanied me,
And when I opened the gate,
The moon too entered.

Okuma Kotomichi (1798-1868), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn  (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 388.

The form of the poem is a tanka (often referred to nowadays as a waka), which consists of five phrases (usually rendered into separate lines in English translations), with a syllable count per line of 5-7-5-7-7.

Samuel Palmer, "Harvest Moon" (c. 1831)