In a mild October landscape, a single golden bough on an elm sheds its leaves one by one onto a hillside dotted with milk-white mushrooms, harebells, and gorse. Everything seems freshly renewed, almost like spring—the air is cool to the skin but warm to the eye. Among this beauty, the speaker feels a familiar ache. He watches the squirrels scold and the gossamer drift, but he can’t slip into the effortless joy of the gorse, which has “no time not to be gay.” If only he could turn with the seasons, he thinks, he might be as happy as the earth is beautiful. Instead, he’s stuck in a mood he calls melancholy. Yet the final thought turns everything softly on its head: someday, he suspects, he’ll look back and see this very day as a happy one, and the word “melancholy” will no longer darken what it names. It captures that strange, quiet feeling when sadness and contentment almost melt into one.
October — Summary
THE green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one,-- The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern; The gossamers wander at their own will. At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.
The rich scene has grown fresh again and new As Spring and to the touch is not more cool Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might As happy be as earth is beautiful, Were I some other or with earth could turn In alternation of violet and rose, Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due, And gorse that has no time not to be gay. But if this be not happiness,--who knows? Some day I shall think this a happy day, And this mood by the name of melancholy Shall no more blackened and obscured be.