Madison Square Park, New York City; November 2016 (photograph by Roger W. Smith)
Poughkeepsie, NY; October 2018 (photograph by Roger W. Smith
Pushkin’s favorite month was October.
Spring starts out wet and raw and often wintry at the outset. Fall starts out just plain nice and within a couple of weeks or so has become just plain gorgeous.
By the end of the season, fall has become indistinguishable from winter. But, in the first month or so, fall features clear, sunny days without oppressive heat, which in summer can be unbearable.
By the end of spring, summer is already here and one experiences days that suffuse the senses of old and young with sheer delight. Ask Shakespeare, who wrote of “springtime, the only pretty ring time, / Sweet lovers love the spring.” (As You Like It).
Ask Edvard Grieg or Carl Nielsen.
Autumn has its proponents too.
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Let Autumn spread his treasures to the sun.
Luxuriant and unbounded …
From heaven’s high cope the fierce effulgence shook
Of parting Summer, a serener blue,
With golden light enliven’d, wide invests
The happy world. Attemper’d suns arise,
Sweet-beam’d, and shedding oft thro’ lucid clouds
A pleasing calm; while broad, and brown, below
Extensive harvests hang the heavy head. …
The sultry south collects a potent blast.
At first the groves are scarcely seen to stir
Their trembling tops; and a still murmur runs
Along the soft-inclining fields of corn.
But as the aerial tempest fuller swells,
And in one mighty stream, invisible.
Immense! the whole excited atmosphere
Impetuous rushes o’er the sounding world;
Strain’d to the root, the stopping forest pours
A rustling shower of yet untimely leaves. …
– James Thomson, The Seasons (1726-1730)
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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
— John Keats, ‘To Autumn” (1820)
“To Autumn,” read by Frederick Davidson
(the poem is at a point around 3:41 on this recording)
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Октябрь уж наступил — уж роща отряхает
Последние листы с нагих своих ветвей;
Дохнул осенний хлад — дорога промерзает.
Журча еще бежит за мельницу ручей,
Но пруд уже застыл; сосед мой поспешает
В отъезжие поля с охотою своей,
И страждут озими от бешеной забавы,
И будит лай собак уснувшие дубравы.
Теперь моя пора: я не люблю весны;
Скучна мне оттепель; вонь, грязь — весной я болен;
Кровь бродит; чувства, ум тоскою стеснены.
Суровою зимой я более доволен,
Люблю ее снега; в присутствии луны
Как легкий бег саней с подругой быстр и волен,
Когда под соболем, согрета и свежа,
Она вам руку жмет, пылая и дрожа!
Ох, лето красное! любил бы я тебя,
Когда б не зной, да пыль, да комары, да мухи.
Ты, все душевные способности губя,
Нас мучишь; как поля, мы страждем от засухи;
Лишь как бы напоить, да освежить себя —
Иной в нас мысли нет, и жаль зимы старухи,
И, проводив ее блинами и вином,
Поминки ей творим мороженым и льдом.
— Александр Пушкин, Осень (1833-1841)
October has arrived – the woods have tossed
Their final leaves from naked branches;
A breath of autumn chill – the road begins to freeze,
The stream still murmurs as it passes by the mill,
The pond, however’s frozen; and my neighbor hastens
to his far-flung fields with all the members of his hunt.
The winter wheat will suffer from this wild fun,
And baying hounds awake the slumbering groves.
This is my time: I am not fond of spring;
The tiresome thaw, the stench, the mud – spring sickens me.
The blood ferments, and yearning binds the heart and mind..
With cruel winter I am better satisfied,
I love the snows; when in the moonlight
A sleigh ride swift and carefree with a friend.
Who, warm and rosy ‘neath a sable mantle,
Burns, trembles as she clasps your hand. …
O, summer fair! I would have loved you, too,
Except for heat and dust and gnats and flies.
You kill off all our mental power,
Torment us; and like fields, we suffer from the drought;
To take a drink, refresh ourselves somehow –
We think of nothing else, and long for lady Winter,
And, having bid farewell to her with pancakes and with wine,
We hold a wake to honor her with ice-cream and with ice.
The latter days of fall are often cursed,
But as for me, kind reader, she is precious
In all her quiet beauty, mellow glow.
— Alexander Pushkin, “Autumn” (1833-1841)
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“Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. … October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world.”
— Henry David Thoreau, “Autumnal Tints” (1862)
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And Roger W. Smith.
And, yes, the foliage is unmatched in the Northeast. I grew up in Massachusetts like Thoreau, and I never can or will forget the September and October days of my childhood.
— Posted by Roger W. Smith
October 2018
