Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
Autumn Song, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Jesus Christ, Dan, ain't you got something a bit more cheery to sing? I told you to lay off that laudanum shit, it's not doing you any good at all. And what's with the "knowest thou" stuff, man? It's 1848, not 1648! Besides, that rhyme scheme is just stupid. Gimme that guitar!
It's hard to believe that I was once signed up, full grant and all, to spend three precious youthful years, 1976-79, researching the maudlin mock-mediaeval ramblings of the so-called, self-styled Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A narrow escape, and it was all really only due to one poem, "The Burden of Nineveh", as described in this post from 2010. I remember that at the time I was also convinced that Duke Luke – the name of the villain in a truly silly Rossetti poem, "The Staff and the Scrip" – would make a great name for a rock band, and I see some Lithuanian dude has since made off with it. You're welcome! And no, I have never watched The Dukes of Hazzard, featuring Luke Duke, first broadcast in 1979, apparently. I wonder if the show's writers had also been reading Rossetti? Somehow I doubt it.
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