In Tennyson’s “Tithonus,” “The woods decay, the woods decay and fall” evokes a sere, exhausted natural world; A late-autumn lyric may describe “sere grass whispering under frost,” where sere means dry, withered, or no longer green; Thomas Hardy’s wintry landscapes often make seasonal barrenness echo emotional loss, a useful context for sere imagery; In a drought poem, “sere corn rattled in the empty field” gives the adjective ecological as well as symbolic force; Because sere often carries associations of age and decline, “sere hands” can be effective but should be used carefully to avoid cliché