Autumn Reflection

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and 

autumn a mosaic of them all.

Stanley Horowitz

Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
Emily Bronte

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold,

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Nothing Gold Can Stay.

In the other gardens

And all up the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!

Robert Louis Stevenson

Autumn Fires

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.

Mitchell Burgess

From TV series Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving, 1992.

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
George Cooper
October's Party.

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.

Elizabeth Lawrence

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods,
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt,
And night by night the monitory blast
Wails in the key-hole, telling how it pass'd
O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes,
Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt
Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods
Than any joy indulgent Summer dealt.
William Allingham
Autumnal Sonnet.

The mellow autumn came, and with it came

The promised party, to enjoy its sweets.

The corn is cut, the manor full of game;

The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats

In russet jacket;--lynx-like is his aim;

Full grows his bag, and wonderful his feats.

An, nutbrown partridges! An, brilliant pheasants!

And ah, ye poachers!--'Tis no sport for peasants.

Lord Byron

Don Juan.

The falling leaves drift by the window

The autumn leaves of red and gold

I see your lips, the summer kisses

The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long

And soon I'll hear old winter's song

But I miss you most of all my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall.

Johnny Mercer