For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Sonnet CVI.
Not all the joy, and not all the glory,
Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary.
Swinburne.
THERE is a sigh in the passing breeze as the autumn days steal on—a sigh for the summer fled. I hear the change, the admonitory whisper of the leaves, almost ere the transition becomes perceptible, for Nature as yet has scarcely altered her outward garb.
Yet daily the shadows lengthen, the haze deepens, mellower grow the evening skies, until, no longer vacillating between summer and autumn, the first frost smites the low-lands, and the division line of the seasons is visibly proclaimed.
“We hope in the spring, only to regret in the fall.” But shall I regret the vanished summer? Will not yonder hillside glow as all the summer meadows have never glowed? these yellowing woods outshine the sunshine of spring? Suddenly, through my windows, I note where the first fires have begun to burn. I watch the flames creep stealthily along the hills, smoldering, perchance, in a distant hollow, anon riding the higher crests, illuming sumac-sentineled ravines, invading the brier patches, and lighting sproutland and swamp with living fire. High on the uplands the splendor hangs, low in the valleys the glory falls. Steeped and flooded with its color, the landscape gleams like an opal beneath the autumn sun. What poet, what prose painter, what cunning artificer of phrase can depict the tidal wave of beauty of the latter year?