WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The coat without a seam, and other poems cover

The coat without a seam, and other poems

Chapter 43: RED OCTOBER
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

This collection of lyric and narrative poems moves between wartime urgency and reflective peace, offering sonnets, elegies, and short lyrics that interrogate sacrifice, patriotism, and the yearning for reconciliation. Voices range from public banners and martial images to intimate meditations on grief, domestic memory, and nature. Frequent religious and moral imagery frames contemplations of duty, loss, and the possibility of a unified humanity. Formal variety includes sonnet sequences and freer lyrics, often balancing didactic rhetoric with tender observation to consider how communities and individuals reckon with conflict, remembrance, and the promise of healing.

RED OCTOBER

Red October, and the slow leaf sailing;
All the maples flaring scarlet splendor,
All the dogwoods glowing crimson glory,
All the oak-leaves bronze, the beech-leaves golden:
Blue, ah blue! the reaches of the river,
Blue the sky above the russet mountain,
Blue the creek among the tawny marshes,
Blue the tart wild-grape beside the hill-road:
At our feet the burnished chestnut shining;
Scent of autumn, and the brown leaves’ rustle;
Cloudy clematis among the brambles,
Orange bittersweet along the wayside.
Days too-perfect, priceless for their passing,
Colored with the light of evanescence,
Fragrant with the breath of frailest beauty—
Days ineffable of red October!