Tithonus in Autumn: A Fragment, Bret van den Brink (December 2025)

 

Tithonus in Autumn: A Fragment

Perhaps were I to stand where once I stood,

Where once I walked, the blue of days gone by

Would part, recalling me to my lost home,

The happy cottage of my boyhood years,

With pleasant wattles, and with waters calm.

Perhaps the bread was never quite enough,

Nor were the fields of wheat quite e’er so high

As we could wish; nathless, when autumn came,

The stooks dotted the fields like pilèd gold;

And we would fill our table’s twisted horn

With berries slight, and warty gourds, and leaves,

And hail that little, hollow, half-filled thing

As our best prize, a cornucopia

Copious with plenty, amply spilling

The mellowed sweetness of the world’s decline—

Sweet to behold, and sweeter still to taste.