T.E. Hulme: 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.

Public Domain

ed. note: Written in 1908, ‘Autumn’ by the British poet and critic T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) is arguably the first modern poem in the English language. Free-verse poems which depend for their effect on luminous details while eschewing the discursive rhetoric of Georgian poems, “imagism” defined the avant-garde style among early 20th century Anglo-American poets such as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and H.D. In addition, the Imagist Movement had a strong influence on major Modern poets such as Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and William Butler Yeats.