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 season on its head here: autumn isn't the weather, it's the weather of the self. Around him spring keeps going about its business — birds darting and building, life stirring everywhere — while the coldness belongs entirely to the speaker. That contrast between outer vitality and inner stillness is the whole engine of the poem, and it's done with quiet, unforced music: short lines, simple rhymes, nothing showy. The last stanza turns even quieter, borrowing images of harvest — dead leaves falling, no flail beating the sheaves, no murmur from the mill — to suggest a life that has gone fallow, work finished, sound stopped. It lands today because everyone knows this feeling: being surrounded by other people's spring while carrying your own private November. Longfellow doesn't explain it or fix it. He just names it plainly, which is why it still feels true.
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