The Hills of Hingham

by Dallas Lore Sharp

At that word "sighing" many trusting readers will lay this essay down. They have had more than enough of this brand of pathos from their youth up.

"The 'sobbing wind,' the 'weeping rain,'--
'Tis time to give the lie
To these old superstitious twain--
That poets sing and sigh.

"Taste the sweet drops,--no tang of brine,
Feel them--they do not burn;
The daisy-buds, whereon they shine,
Laugh, and to blossoms turn"--

that is, in June they do; but do they in October? There are no daisies to laugh in October. A few late asters fringe the roadsides; an occasional bee hums loudly in among them; but there is no sound of laughter, and no shine of raindrops in the broken hoary seed-stalks that strew the way. If the daisy-buds laugh,—as surely they do in June,—why should not the wind sob and the rain weep—as surely they do—in October? There are days of shadow with the days of sunshine; the seasons have their moods, as we have ours, and why should one be accused of more sentiment than sense, and of bad rhetoric, too, in yielding to the spirit of the empty woods till the slow, slanting rain of October weeps, and the soughing wind comes sobbing through the trees?

Fall rain, fall steadily, heavily, drearily. Beat off the fading leaves and flatten them into shapeless patterns on the soaking floor. Fall and slant and flatten, and, if you will, weep. Blow wind, through the creaking branches, blow about the whispering corners; parley there outside my window; whirl and drive the brown leaves into hiding, and if I am sad, sigh with me and sob.

May one not indulge in gentle melancholy these closing days of autumn, and invite the weather in, without being taken to task for it? One should no more wish to escape from the sobering influence of the October days than from the joy of the June days, or the thrill in the wide wonder of the stars.

"If winds have wailed and skies wept tears,
To poet's vision dim,
'T was that his own sobs filled his ears,
His weeping blinded him"--

of course! And blessed is the man who finds winds that will wail with him, and skies that love him enough to weep in sympathy. It saves his friends and next of kin a great deal of perfunctory weeping.

There is no month in all the twelve as lovely and loved as October. A single, glorious June day is close to the full measure of our capacity for joy; but the heart can hold a month of melancholy and still ache for more. So it happens that June is only a memory of individual days, while October is nothing less than a season, a mood, a spirit, a soul, beautiful, pensive, fugitive. So much is already gone, so many things seem past, that all the gold of gathered crops and glory on the wooded hillsides only gild and paint the shadow that sleeps within the very sunshine of October.

In June the day itself was the great event. It is not so in October. Then its coming and going were attended with ceremony and splendor, the dawn with invisible choirs, the sunset with all the pageantry and pomp of a regal fête. Now the day has lessened, and breaks tardily and without a dawn, and with a blend of shadow quickly fades into the night. The warp of dusk runs through even its sunlit fabric from daybreak to dark.