Featured Poem: An October Garden by Christina Rossetti

October has arrived and with it, the chillier days of Autumn. The golden and falling leaves provide us with a last flurry of colour before the greyer winter months set in, and although the season might start to signal that 'all the world is on the wane', as Christina Rossetti puts it, it's a good time to get outside and breath in that autumnal air before there's too much rain to dampen the enjoyment.

An October Garden

In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn's languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.

Christina Rossetti