One Sad, One Happy

 I came across this poem by Walter de la Mare the other day, and it struck me as just about the saddest autumn poem I have read...

There is a wind where the rose was;
Cold rain where sweet grass was;
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was;
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

Sad winds where your voice was;
Tears, tears where my heart was;
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.

Surely, I thought, this is a poem of grief for a lost child – but no, it seems not: all four of the Da la Mares' children lived into adulthood. I was relieved to learn this, but wonder what can have inspired such a grief-stricken poem?
  Anyway, for something happier, here is Auden's 'A Mosaic for Marianne Moore', written on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, in 1967 (she was born on this day in 1887)...
 

The concluded gardens of personal liking
Are enchanted habitats,
Where real toads may catch imaginary flies,
And the climate will accommodate the tiger
And the polar-bear.

So, in the middle of yours (where it is human
To sit), we see you sitting,
In a wide-brimmed hat beneath a monkey-puzzle,
At your feet the beasts you animated for us
By thinking of them.

Your lion with ferocious chrysanthemum head,
Your jerboa erect on
His Chippendale claw, your pelican behaving
Like charred paper, your musk-ox who smells of water,
Your fond nautilus,

Cope with what surprises them and greet the stranger
In a Mid-Western accent,
Even that bum, the unelephantine creature,
Who is certainly here to worship and often
Selected to mourn.

Egocentric, eccentric, he will name a cat
Peter, a new car Edsel,
Emphasize his own birthday and a few others
He thinks deserve it, as to-day we stress your name,
Miss Marianne Moore,

Who, fastidious but fair, are unaffronted
By those whose disposition
It is to affront, who beg the cobra’s pardon,
Are always on time and never would yourself write
Error with four r’s.

For poems, dolphin-graceful as carts from Sweden,
Our thank-you should be a right
Good salvo of barks: it’s much too muffled to say
“How well and with what unfreckled integrity
It has all been done.”