Search This Blog

Total Pageviews

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

HOMAGE TO FALL :POST THREE

COUNTRYSIDE

RED MAPLE

VIEW THROUGH THE PINES

MADELINE ISLAND

CORNER OF TENTH STREET AND OLD MILITARY AVE.
Tuesday, 9:00 AM.  52 degrees F on both thermometers, wind SSW, calm with occasional very light gusts.  The sky is partly cloudy, the humidity 64%.  The barometer has just begun to fall, now at 29.96". The high today will be near 70, the warm trend continuing during the week, with mixed sun and clouds, and thunderstorms by Saturday evening.
   It continues to be a very colorful fall, although many of the red oak leaves are turning bronze or brown, so late fall color may not be as good as earlier.  Nonetheless, it is beautiful.
   These are the days when one is blessed, who has nothing to do but live.

“To Autumn” by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease, 
      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 
   Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 
   Or by a cider-press, with patient look, 
      Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? 
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 
   The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

No comments:

Post a Comment