“The meadows are waving high
With plumy grasses of grey”;
the next, the scythe comes, and, like Harlequin’s wand, passes restless athwart the ripe scene—and, hey, presto! the fields have all the closeness of the fields in springtime, and are studded with countless rosy stars of the Autumn Crocus, just as, in the first days of the year, they are studded with the myriad rosy stars of Bulbocodium vernum, near relative of our tardy Colchique. It is September struggling to be May or, even, April. It is the goddess of the flower-fields bidding us to a rosy hope in her recurrent reign.
And yet, and yet—autumn is noticeably in the blood of things. This is not quite the rosiness of the year’s youth. There is something of mauve in it; something of a becoming consideration for old age. It is obviously an autumnal pink—a pink which falls without ado into the glorious colour-scheme of Nature’s kindling funeral-pyre. It has something of the spirit of the colouring surrounding a Chinese burial. There is sadness, if you will; but there is gladness, whether you will or not. Chopin’s famous Funeral March might have been inspired by autumn’s pale-magenta “Crocus.”
PART II
A PLEA
“Viens au jardin! Viens au jardin! Je veux te dire
Ce que je pense, car ma pensée est à toi