Autumn Movement
Carl Sandburg
I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.
Of note
This poem appeared in Poetry magazine in October 1918 and was collected that same year in Sandburg's Cornhuskers. The book shared a 1919 Pulitzer poetry award, funded by a special grant from the Poetry Society, three years before the Pulitzers set up a regular poetry prize.
Poetry Tale: The Poet and the Champion Goat
FREE AND OPEN: Hello Doggo’s music, recordings and artwork: CC0 1.0, credit optional. The source poem has its own rights status: Poem is public domain in the United States and at least 86 other countries; still in copyright in Italy, Peru and Uruguay through 2037.
TEXT PROVENANCE · First published October 1918 in Poetry · Text from Cornhuskers (1918), via Wikisource.
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