Autumn begins with a subtle change in the light, with skies a deeper blue, and nights that become suddenly clear and chilled. The season comes full with the first frost, the disappearance of migrant birds, and the harvesting of the season's last crops. Jerry Dennis and Glenn Wolff
Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon? Hal Borland
I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Autumn arrives, array'd in splendid mein;
Vines, cluster'd full, add to the beauteous scene,
And fruit-trees cloth'd profusely laden, nod,
Complaint bowing to the fertile sod. Farmer's Almanac (1818)
It is only her in large portions of Canada that wonderous second wind, the Indian summer, attains its amplitude and heavenly perfection, -- the temperatures; the sunny haze; the mellow, rich delicate, almost flavoured air: Enough to live -- enough to merely be. Walt Whitman, Diary in Canada
Then summer fades and passes and October comes. Will smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure. Thomas Wolfe
For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad. Edwin Way Teale
Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on. William Cullen Bryant, Autumn Woods
[Autumn] is the season for enjoying the fullness of life -- partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth. Denis Waitley
The hound of the autumn wind is slow; he loves to bask in the heat and sleep. Peter MacArthur, An Indian Wind Song
...for those whose favorite season is autumn with its days of cloudless sky, of spacious and clear, far-flung panoramas -- those who view nature with detachment, for whom nature's appeal is primarily pictorial, classicists as opposed to romanticists, perhaps. On such a day, one is usually excited, physically exhilarated, mentally stimulated. Only not much is left for the imagination. Charlton Ogburn, Jr.
Autumn is a second season when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus
Heat and cold chase one another like pups playing -- yesterday ovenish, today cold storage. Oh, perfect in the pauses when the wind forgets and the sun remembers! Emily Carr
For the Fall of the year is more than three months bounded by an equinox and a solstice. It is a summing up without the finality of year's end. Hal Borland
Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands,
come off the whisper of the silk hangers,
the lap of the flat spear leaves. Carl Sandburg
The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools. Henry Beston, Northern Farm
It was Indian summer, a bluebird sort of day as we call it in the north, warm and sunny, without a breath of wind; the water was sky-blue, the shores a bank of solid gold. Sigurd F. Olson
Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn. Elizabeth Lawrence
Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
Humbert Wolfe
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn. John Muir
I see, when I bend close, how each leaflet of a climbing rose is bordered with frost, the autumn counterpart of the dewdrops of summer dawns. The feathery leaves of yarrow are thick with silver rime and dry thistle heads rise like goblets plated with silver catching the sun. Edwin Way Teale
When I speak
My lips feel cold --
The autumn wind
Basho
A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air. Eric Sloane
The Autumn night is changeable. Norwegian Proverb
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence. Thomas Hood Ode: Autumn
October is the month when summer trees become autumn trees and autumn trees become winter trees. Edwin Way Teale
O wild West Wind, thou
breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen
presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an
enchanter fleeing. Percy B. Shelley
Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable, the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street or road by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese. Both are warnings of chill days ahead, fireside and topcoat weather. Hal Borland
I like the feeling of danger in the cold Autumn air that carries a quiet warning that winter is on the way and that time is running short. John J. Rowlands, Cache Lake Country
Fog in November, trees have no heads, Streams only sound, walls suddenly stop
Half-way up hills... Leonard Clark, Fog in November
The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on.... A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind. Aldo Leopold
Autumn is the time when seasons merge because of bare necessity. Rod McKuen
She calls it "stick season," this slow disrobing of summer, leaf by leaf, till the bores of tall trees rattle and scrape in the wind. Eric Pinder
Let autumn be ended appropriately with a snowstorm, with a vague moving whiteness turning grey and night approaches, with snow settling down or streaking or swirling in aerial eddies. Paul L. Errington
Autumn ends, not by the calendar, but by the season itself. The leaves are gone, save those few parched hangers-on that will cling the Winter through to the twigs of oak and beech and ironwood. Hal Borland, An American Year
The hazy, cloudless skies of Indian Summer. Leaves scurrying down the street before the wind. The cold shiver from an arctic blast. Indian Summer. The last warmth of the sun. Chilly mornings and glorious warm afternoons. The Harvest Moon. The Hunter's Moon. The Rainy Season. Dry corn stalks clattering in the wind. The touch of frost on grass and window pane. The smell of burning leaves. Keith C. Heidorn
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