The half stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine,— like no leaf that ever was— edge the bare garden.
Where this text comes from
First published in Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (6)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L11.
Cite this poem
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963).
“Approach of Winter.” First published in Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/william-carlos-williams/approach-of-winter/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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