I have always liked this one too and it seems applicable to the general Autumn threads as well as several others..

The Burning of the leaves
By Laurence Binyon

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves
They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke
Wandering slowly into a weeping mist
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist

The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust;
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean
All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;
sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making the corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before:
Rootless hopes and fruitless desire are there;
Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind.
The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

They will come again , the leaf and the flower, to arise
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wandering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring