The Fall of the Year

by Dallas Lore Sharp

V

You ought to hear the brown leaves rustling under your feet.

“Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.”

And they should rustle to your tread as well. Scuff along in them where they lie in deep windrows by the side of the road; and hear them also, as the wind gathers them into a whirling flurry and sends them rattling over the fields.

VI

You ought to hear the cry of the blue jay and the caw of the crow in the autumn woods.

“The robin and the wren are flown, but from the shrub the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.”