Category Archives: nature

We still love this September poem.

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(I’m reposting this from five years ago. Every September, many, many people still find the poem below on my blog. This fall, for the first time, I am pleased to say I have acquired a purple aster to enjoy for the next couple of months, and have installed it by the front door.)

Only a few years ago did I discover this poem. Being short and packed with autumnal images, it is perfect for a busy time of year, when you don’t want to let the equinox pass unnoticed, but you are canning tomatoes or drying figs or just taking all the walks you can in the crisp air. If you don’t pay attention to the calendar or the TV, you might miss the day.

For months and years I’ve been trying off and on to confirm that its author is Edwina Hume Fallis. New things show up on Internet searches all the time, and today I have seen enough sites that are confident about attributing it to her that I will accept it. Two months ago I couldn’t find two postings of the poem where her name was even spelled right. Most places it is shared as by “Anonymous.”

In the city of Denver, Colorado, Edwina Hume Fallis is especially famous, for her teaching and writing, a toy shop she owned, and her book When Denver and I Were Young. (I did recently contact the Denver public library to see if they had a copy of the poem below in their collection about her; they did not.) She and her sister made toys to use as props in telling stories to kindergarten students, and she did write over 100 poems; maybe this one was in an anthology that is now out of print. Many women bloggers seem to have memorized it in elementary school.

I wonder if any of my readers in the Southern Hemisphere knows of a similar poem that applies to the opposite seasons down there?

SEPTEMBER

A road like brown ribbon,
A sky that is blue
A forest of green with that sky peeping through.
Asters deep purple,
A grasshopper’s call –
Today, it is Summer
Tomorrow is Fall!

-Edwina Hume Fallis

At Pippin’s in 2017, waiting for the aspens to turn.

The delicious scent and repose.

nature, quotes,

Early fall rain has told me confidently about the arrival of the season. And there’s nothing so evocative, familiar but startling, as that particular scent that is carried in the droplets, and in the mist rising from the ground. 

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

― George Eliot, George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals

[Letter to Miss Lewis, Oct. 1, 1841]

Deep in a Vale

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DEEP IN A VALE

Deep in a vale where rocks on every side
Shut out the winds, and scarcely let the sun
Between them dart his rays down one by one,
Where all was still and cool in summer-tide,
And softly, with her whispering waves that sighed,
A little river, that had scarce begun
Her silver course, made bold to fleet and run
Down leafy falls to woodlands dense and wide,
There stood a tiny plain, just large enow
To give small mountain-folk right room to dance,
With oaks and limes and maples ringed around;
Hither I came, and viewed its turf askance,
Its solitude with beauty seemed a-glow,—
My Love had walked there and ’twas holy ground!
-Gustaf Rosenhane (1619–1684) Sweden
        Translated by Edmund Gosse
Van Gogh, The Poet’s Garden

Till Tomorrow

nature, poetry, summer, , ,

TILL TOMORROW 

Good night! good night! — the golden day
Has veiled its sunset beam,
And twilight’s star its beauteous ray
Has mirrored in the stream; —
Low voices come from vale and height,
And murmur soft, good night! good night!

Good night! — the bee with folded wings
Sleeps sweet in honeyed flowers,
And far away the night-bird sings
In dreamy forest bowers,
And slowly fades the western light
In deepening shade, — good night! good night!

Good night! good night! — in whispers low
The ling’ring zephyr sighs.
And softly, in its dreamy flow.
The murm’ring brook replies;
And, where yon casement still is bright,
A softer voice has breathed good-night!

Good night! — as steals the cooling dew
Where the young violet lies.
E’en so may slumber steal anew
To weary human eyes.
And softly steep the aching sight
In dewy rest — good night! good night!

-Pamelia Sarah Yule, (1826 – 1897) Canada

Igor Grabar, Summer Evening