SONGS OF AUTUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3869, 8 May 1928, Page 74

SONGS OF AUTUMN.

By

Sidney Dark.

- 'When soft September brings again To yonder gorse its golden glow. To me the autumn is the greyest time ‘of the year, insistently reminding me of lost opportunities and unfulfilled dreams. Perhaps our autumn mood is affected by the character of the summer.that lias passed. After a torrid summer there is definite and acute joy in the cool of autumn days. Moreover, it is certainly true that the early autumn, while ’ the leaves are still off the trees, is far less inducive of despondency and regret than the later days, when the golden brown of the world is deepening into the heavy brown of winter. Still, I am heartily with Mr Gerald Hopkins when he writes: I have desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail, And a few lilies blow. Poets have always loved the spring more than the autumn, promise more than fulfilment, beginning more than end. But autumn has its consoling, and even its triumphing ‘ singers. • Shakespeare wrote— The teeming autumn, big with rich incense, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime

Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease. * * * Keats’s “ Ode to Autumn ” is perhaps the greatest tribute in our language to the fall of the year. I quote the last verse— 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. Again, in his “ The Human Seasons,” Keats says— Quiet coves His soul has in its autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. «■ * * Autumn is the season of harvest and robust rejoicing, when the earth gives its produce and the vines their fruit. This fact is the inspiration of Francis Thompson’s magnificent “ A Corymbus of Autumn,” from which I quote tlie following— The wassailous heart of the year is thine His Bacchic fingers disentwine His coronal At thy festival ; — His revelling fingers disentwine Leaf, flower, and all, ? And let them fall Blossom and all in thy wavering wine. The summer looks out from her brazen tower. Through the flashing bars of July, Walting thy ripened golden shower; Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, The north-west flying vlewlessly. With a sword to shear, and untamable feet, And the gorgon-head of the winter shown To stiffen the gazing earth as stone. « * » In her charming “ An Afterthought on Apples,” Helen Parry Eden boldly compares autumn with spring, and" finds autumn infinitely more stimulating— While yet unfallen apples throng the bough, To ripen as they cling In lieu of the lost bloom. I ponder how Myself did flower in so rough a spring. And was not set in grace When the first flush was gone from summer's face ; How in my tardy season, making one Of a crude congregation, sour in sin, I nodded like a green-clad mandarin, Averse from all that savoured of the sun. But now throughout these last autumnal weeks What skyey gales mine arrogant station thresh, What sunbeams mellow my beshadowed cheeks, What steely storms cudgel mine obdurate flesh 1 The ruddy ripe autumn apple fills the heart of another poetess, Katharine Tynan, with a certain joy— Dead heat and windless air, And silence over all; Never a leaf astir, . But the ripe apples fall ; Plums are purple-red, Pears amber and brown ; Thud ! in the garden bed Ripe apples fall down. * » ■ « I have admitted the splendour of the autumn gold, a splendour less exciting than that of the eager yellows of spring and the flaunting scarlets of summer, the splendour of fast-vanishing maturity, but yet matchless in its beauty, Clough has written of the time When soft autumn brings again To yonder gorse its golden glow. And Snowden sends its autumn rain To bid thy current livelier flow. And Browning revels, characteristically, in the “ good gigantic smile ” of the world as the colour of the earth deepens and the days draw in. Oh, good gigantic smile of the brown old earth This autumn morning ! How he sets his bones To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over tn its mirth ; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. • * * ■ * The glory of the autumn soon passes. The gold and red leaves soon fall. Coleridge says in “ Christabel ” — The night Is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From tho lovely lady’s cheek— There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of Its clan. That dances as often as dance it can. Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. * . * • * But the world grows old and we grow old with it. To love life is to love youth, and, however good the growing old may be, it is hard not to look back with a little heartache. None of us really likes to think that we are old. As Ernest Dowson says— When I am old And steal sadly apart Into the. dark and cold. Friend of my heart! Remember, if you can r . Not him who lingers, but that other man, Who loved and sang, and hi«> a beating heart— When I am old)

Even growing old, however, has its beauty and its compensations. I quote the poet Waller— The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made; Stronger by weakness, wiser men become As they draw near to their eternal home; Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new. • • • The summer has ended. The autumn is with us. The winter approaches. But spring and summer and autumn have been ours.' 8. Weir Mitchell has written— I know the night is near at hand. The mists lie low on hill and bay. The autumn sheaves are dewless, dry ; But I have had the day. And if mid-day has been thrilling, there will, at least, be the red warm glow of memory in the afternoon sky.— John o’ London’s Weekly.