1. Visionary tints: The term Indian summer is given to almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather. In America these characteristic features of late fall were especially associated with the middle West, at a time when the Indians occupied that region.
5. Hebe: Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods at their feasts on Olympus. Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping fields, rimmed round with distant hills, with her own delicious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic influence.
11. My own projected spirit: It seems to the poet that his own spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie like his own, rather than receiving the influence from nature's mood.
25. Gleaning Ruth: For the story of Ruth's gleaning in the fields of Boaz, see the book of Ruth, ii.
38. Chipmunk: Lowell at first had "squirrel" here, which would be inconsistent with the "underground fastness." And yet, are chipmunks seen up in walnut trees?
40. This line originally read, "with a chipping bound." Cheeping is chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds like "cheep," or "chip."
45. Faint as smoke, etc.: The farmer burns the stubble and other refuse of the season before his "fall plowing."
46. The single crow, etc.: Note the full significance of this detail of the picture. Compare Bryant's Death of the Flowers:
"And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day."
50. Compare with this stanza the pretty little poem, The Birch Tree.