autumn leaves

When I was walking yesterday, along the Empire State Trail, I found that I was truly enjoying the beauty of autumn. To me, autumn has always seemed like a sad season, a preparation for the cold iciness of winter. The days grow shorter and the nights lengthen, as do the shadows. But this year, I could see the magic that autumn brings, with the colorful leaves and the flowers that stubbornly stay around. Today, I am sharing some of my photographs of autumn leaves, together with  a few poems by writers who truly and deeply understood the transitional nature of autumn.

“

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

 

Fall,
leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen
night and shorten day;

Every
leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering
from the autumn tree.

I
shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom
where the rose should grow;

I
shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers
in a drearier day.

Emily
Bronte

 

That
time of year thou mayst in me behold

When
yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon
those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare
ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

In
me thou seest the twilight of such day

As
after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which
by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s
second self, that seals up all in rest.

In
me thou seest the glowing of such fire

That
on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As
the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum’d
by that which it was nourished by.

   This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love
more strong,

   To love that well which thou must leave ere
long.

William
Shakespeare