Autumn.

'Tis Autumn.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

There are those days which seem a taking in of breath which, held, suspends the whole earth in its waiting. Some summers refuse to end.

So along the road those flowers spread that, when touched, give down a shower of autumn rust. By every path it looks as if a ruined circus had passed and loosed a trail of ancient iron at every turning of a wheel. The rust was laid out everywhere, strewn under trees and by river-banks and near the tracks themselves where once a locomotive had gone but went no more. So flowered flakes and railroad track together turned to moulderings upon the rim of autumn.

Leap.

AUGUST 15

I await the end of August and the murder of September.

I am here, tardy Autumn, waiting for you. I’ve prepared you a wheat porridge and lit a fire. Come with your wind and sweep away the shameless sun. Lift its hand from my shoulders.

Summer lies heavily on my chest. But my white hand swears by Autumn, and readies the saddle for its wretched horses. Autumn considers my idea then implements it: rows of stones ringing the hillside, and scattered clouds climbing the slope of the sky. Nothing more than this, nothing more.

Of course, you could add a burst of lightning to shatter my bones and the bones of the world.

You were all mistaken. You thought that horses live on the hills of Spring.

Autumn’s hills are the horses’ residence. The scent of rain excites them, their nostrils flare, then they leap over stone walls toward the summit, to graze on the edges of clouds.

Zakaria Mohammed

Thank you, Courtney.

Sense.

No matter how old we get there should always be that sense of living on the margin of impossibility.  Some people are frightened by it, some are elated, but I believe the sense of the impossible can be used to sharpen our senses to what we are doing and where, if anywhere, we are going.

Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity

Surprises.

Faded.

 Wyeth, Pumpkins, 1969

AUTUMN

I love the fitfull gusts that shakes

 The casement all the day

And from the mossy elm tree takes

 The faded leaf away

Twirling it by the window-pane

With thousand others down the lane

I love to see the shaking twig

 Dance till the shut of eve

The sparrow on the cottage rig

 Whose chirp would make believe

That spring was just now flirting by

In summers lap with flowers to lie

I love to see the cottage smoke

 Curl upwards through the naked trees

The pigeons nestled round the coat

 On dull November days like these

The cock upon the dung-hill crowing

The mill sails on the heath a-going

The feather from the ravens breast

 Falls on the stubble lea

The acorns near the old crows nest

 Fall pattering down the tree

The grunting pigs that wait for all

Scramble and hurry where they fall

John Clare

'Tis Autumn.

Autumn.

Smelt.

Grimshaw, Twilight, The Vegetable Garden, 1869

It was autumn, when there were no debates to vex the evening air; and I remember how the leaves smelt like our garden at Blunderstone as we trod them under foot, and how the old, unhappy feeling, seemed to go by, on the sighing wind.

Charles Dickens, from David Copperfield

Celebrate.

Kupka, Autumn Sun, Three Goddesses, 1906

The peasants celebrate with song and dance

The pleasure of the rich harvest,

And full of the liquor of Bacchus

They finish their merrymaking with a sleep.

Friends.

Alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself. I once more feel myself grandly related. This cold and solitude are friends of mine.

Henry David Thoreau, from his journal, dated 7 January 1857

Fine.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field.

The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cockrobin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds, and the golden- winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar-bird, with its red tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

Washington Irving, from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

These.

Thank you, Walker's Arms.

Lengthen.

After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time

to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials

and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.

Direct on them two days of warmer light

to hale them golden toward their term, and harry

the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;

who lives alone will live indefinitely so,

waking up to read a little, draft long letters,   

and, along the city’s avenues,

fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Wildness.

Wyeth, Sundown, 1969

Come, pensive Autumn, with thy clouds, and storms,

And falling leaves, and pastures lost to flowers;

A luscious charm hangs on thy faded forms,

More sweet than Summer in her loveliest hours,

Who, in her blooming uniform of green,

Delights with samely and continued joy:

But give me, Autumn, where thy hand hath been,

For there is wildness that can never cloy, -

The russet hue of fields left bare, and all

The tints of leaves and blossoms ere they fall.

In thy dull days of clouds a pleasure comes,

Wild music softens in thy hollow winds;

And in thy fading woods a beauty blooms,

That's more than dear to melancholy minds.

John Clare

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Yield.

Rackham, He Even Ventured to Taste the Beverage, Which He Found had Much of the Flavour of Excellent Hollands, 1905

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favourite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing: “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” At the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place; but supposing it to be some one of the neighbourhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

Washington Irving, from "Rip Van Winkle"

Welcome.

Wyeth, N.C., Chadds Ford Hills, 1931

The AUTUMN WIND

1

The Autumn wind on suthering wings

Plays round the oak-tree strong

And through the hawthorn hedges sings

The years departing song

There's every leaf upon the whirl

Ten thousand times an hour

The grassy meadows crisp and curl

With here and there a flower

There's nothing in the world I find

That pleases like the Autumn wind.

2

The chaffinch flies from out the bushes

The bluecap " tee hees" on the tree

The wind sues on in merry gushes

His murmuring autumns minstrelsy

The robin sings his autumn song

Upon the crabtree overhead

The clouds like smoak slow sail along

Leaves rustle like the human tread

There's nothing suits my musing mind

So pleasant as the Autumn wind.

3

How many miles it suthers on

And stays to dally with the leaves

And when the first broad blast is gone

A stronger gust the foliage heaves

The poplar tree it turns to gray

As leaves lift up their underside

The birch it dances all the day

To rippling billows petrified

There's nothing calms the quiet mind

So welcome as the Autumn wind.

4

Sweet twittering o'er the meadow grass

Soft sueing o'er the fallow ground

The lark starts up as on they pass

With many a gush and moaning sound

It fans the feathers of the bird

And ruffs the robins ruddy breast

As round the hovel end it whirled

Then sobs and gallops o'er the west

In solitude the musing mind

Must ever love the Autumn wind.

John Clare

'Tis Autumn.

Waits.

I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the loneliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story doesn't show.

Andrew Wyeth

Jubilee.

That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air.  Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.

Wallace Stegner, from Angle of Repose

Listen.

Chatham, Morning at Deep Creek, 1989

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.

Norton Juster, from The Phantom Tollbooth