Mean Temperature 63·60.
AUGUST.
The ears are fill’d, the fields are white,
The constant harvest-moon is bright
To grasp the bounty of the year,
The reapers to the scene repair,
With hook in hand, and bottles slung,
And dowlas-scrips beside them hung.
The sickles stubble all the ground,
And fitful hasty laughs go round;
The meals are done as soon as tasted,
And neither time nor viands wasted.
All over—then, the barrels foam—
The “Largess”-cry, the “Harvest-home!”
*
The “Mirror of the Months” likens August to “that brief, but perhaps best period of human life, when the promises of youth are either fulfilled or forgotten, and the fears and forethoughts connected with decline have not yet grown strong enough to make themselves felt; and consequently when we have nothing to do but look around us, and be happy.” For it is in this month that the year “like a man at forty, has turned the corner of its existence; but, like him, it may still fancy itself young, because it does not begin to feel itself getting old. And perhaps there is no period like this, for encouraging and bringing to perfection that habit of tranquil enjoyment, in which all true happiness must mainly consist: with pleasure it has, indeed, little to do; but with happiness it is every thing.”
The author of the volume pursues his estimate by observing, that “August is that debateable ground of the year, which is situated exactly upon the confines of summer and autumn; and it is difficult to say which has the better claim to it. It is dressed in half the flowers of the one, and half the fruits of the other; and it has a sky and a temperature all its own, and which vie in beauty with those of the spring. May itself can offer nothing so sweet to the senses, so enchanting to the imagination, and so soothing to the heart, as that genial influence which arises from the sights, the sounds, and the associations, connected with an August evening in the country, when the occupations and pleasures of the day are done, and when all, even the busiest, are fain to give way to that ‘wise passiveness,’ one hour of which is rife with more real enjoyment than a whole season of revelry. Those who will be wise (or foolish) enough to make comparisons between the various kinds of pleasure of which the mind of man is capable, will find that there is none (or but one) equal to that felt by a true lover of nature, when he looks forth upon her open face silently, at a season like the present, and drinks in that still beauty which seems to emanate from every thing he sees, till his whole senses are steeped in a sweet forgetfulness, and he becomes unconscious of all but that instinct of good which is ever present with us, but which can so seldom make itself felt amid that throng of thoughts which are ever busying and besieging us, in our intercourse with the living world. The only other feeling which equals this, in its intense quietude, and its satisfying fulness, is one which is almost identical with it,—where the accepted lover is gazing unobserved, and almost unconsciously, on the face of his mistress, and tracing their sweet evidences of that mysterious union which already exists between them.
“The whole face of nature has undergone, since last month, an obvious change; obvious to those who delight to observe all her changes and operations, but not sufficiently striking to insist on being seen generally by those who can read no characters but such as are written in a text hand. If the general colours of all the various departments of natural scenery are not changed, their hues are; and if there is not yet observable the infinite variety of autumn, there is as little the extreme monotony of summer. In one department, however, there is a general change, that cannot well remain unobserved. The rich and unvarying green of the corn-fields has entirely and almost suddenly changed to a still richer and more conspicuous gold colour; more conspicuous on account of the contrast it now offers to the lines, patches, and masses of green with which it every where lies in contact, in the form of intersecting hedge-rows, intervening meadows, and bounding masses of forest. These latter are changed too; but in hue alone, not in colour. They are all of them still green; but it is not the fresh and tender green of the spring, nor the full and satisfying, though somewhat dull, green of the summer; but many greens, that blend all those belonging to the seasons just named, with others at once more grave and more bright; and the charming variety and interchange of which are peculiar to this delightful month, and are more beautiful in their general effect than those of either of the preceding periods: just as a truly beautiful woman is perhaps more beautiful at the period immediately before that at which her charms begin to wane, than she ever was before. Here, however, the comparison must end; for with the year its incipient decay is the signal for it to put on more and more beauties daily, till, when it reaches the period at which it is on the point of sinking into the temporary death of winter, it is more beautiful in general appearance than ever.”