Autumn

Autumn hath all the summer's fruitful treasure;

Gone is our sport, fled is poor Croydon's pleasure.

Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace,

Ah, who shall hide us from the winter's face?

Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease,

And here we lie, God knows, with little ease.

From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord deliver us!

London doth mourn, Lambeth is quite forlorn;

Trades cry, Woe worth that ever they were born.

The want of term is town and city's harm;

Close chambers we do want to keep us warm.

Long banished must we live from our friends;

This low-built house will bring us to our ends.

From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord deliver us!

Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe, (born 1567, Lowestoft, Suffolk, Eng.—died c. 1601, Yarmouth, Norfolk?), pamphleteer, poet, dramatist, and author of The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594), the first picaresque novel in English. Nashe was educated at the University of Cambridge, and about 1588 he went to London, where he became associated with Robert Greene and other professional writers. In 1589 he wrote The Anatomie of Absurditie and the preface to Greene’s Menaphon. Both works are bold, opinionated surveys of the contemporary state of writing; occasionally obscure, they are euphuistic in style and range freely over a great variety of topics.

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Autumn

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