XLI
THE FALL OF THE LEAF
Once more has the Equinox come and dropped into the past. Autumn—the Fall, as our older and more poetic term had it to balance the image of Spring, and as America still prefers to call it—is about us.
We disagree radically with Chateaubriand’s estimate of the “russet and silver days.”
“A moral character” ‹thus does the Father of Romantisme meditate, in his usual melancholy mood, upon the season of shortening days and long-drawing nights› “is attached to autumnal scenes.... The leaves falling like our years, the flowers withdrawing like our hours, the colours of the clouds fading like our illusions, the light waning like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives—everything about Autumn bears secret relations to our destinies....”
Yes, we disagree with every one of these similes. Rather should Autumn be considered as the happy season of the task accomplished. The wine is pressed and stored, the fruit is garnered.... In the garden it is the time of eager preparation against new delights, another year; of solicitude for the treasures of beauty which are to brighten another Spring, another Summer. The seed of the dying Annuals has been saved; the more tender of the Perennials are timely withdrawn into shelter, while the hardier are cosily tucked in their own bed for the coming long winter sleep. It is the time of the tidying down and of the confident “good night—till next year!”
“Colder, like our affections,” indeed! What will not love of rhetoric perpetrate?—and Christmastide drawing on apace!