August

“ In August the grass is still verdant on the hills and in the valleys; the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever and as green; the flowers gleam forth in richer abundance along the margin of the river and by the stone walls and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid now as they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every beam of sunshine we hear the whispered farewell and behold the parting smile of a dear friend. There is a coolness amid all the heat, a mildness in the blazing noon. Not a breeze can stir but it thrills us with the breath of autumn. ”

“ Hail, brother August, flushed and warm And scatheless from my storm. Your hands are full of corn, I see, As full as hands can be: [26] And earth and air both smell as sweet as balm In their recovered calm, And that they owe to me. [July retires into a shrubbery.] August.
Wheat sways heavy, oats are airy, Barley bows a graceful head, Short and small shoots up canary, Each of these is some one's bread; Bread for man or bread for beast, Or at very least A bird's savory feast. Men are brethren of each other, One in flesh and one in food ”

“ What we have thought and said in the august presence of witnessing stars, or beneath the holy shadows of moonlight, seems with the hot, dry light of next day's sun to take wings, and rise to heaven with the night's clear drops. ”

“ For the Sabbath day is a day for rest and holy thought, and the late August is the rest time of the year, when the woods and fields are all asleep in a slumberous blue haze; the sacred time, too, for in late August old Mother Earth is breathing her holiest aspirations heavenward, having made offering of her best in the full fruitage of the year. ”

“ It all happened in August, the limp and lazy month of the year abhorred by Martha Saunders, born Corkle. It surely requires a certain amount of natural philosophy, adaptability to fruit and salad lunches, and an aptitude for lounging in shady places and watching the grass grow, or gazing through the trees skyward from the depth of a hammock, to make August even a mildly pleasurable month. Night is August’s strong point; her full moon sheds a placid coppery light, making the glistening green of the cornfields, heavy in ear, look wet and cool ”

“ Like a red rose upon the distant hill,
Till all the earth seems tenderly forgetting
Day's dying light on meadow, lake and rill;
But come!—for darkness soon will gather round us,
And we must pass through yonder woodlands there;
And then white fields of buckwheat will surround us,
And then—then—home we shall together share.
AUGUST
Come walk a mile with me—'Tis August. ”

“ You draw illusive bigness from the mountain. You imagine that you are august, but you are not. If the man below was informed by telephone that a being august was gazing on him from above he would probably squint his eyes upwards in the sunshine and assert with calmness that he couldn’t even see a living speck on the mountain-crest. You who have gone up had better come down. ”

“ August comes: the Thistles are out, beloved of butterflies; deeper and deeper tints, more passionate intensities of color, prepare the way for the year's decline. A wealth of gorgeous Golden-Rod waves over all the hills, and enriches every bouquet one gathers; its bright colors command the eye, and it is graceful as an elm. ”

“ August shuddered all over.
"The morning!" he echoed.
He slowly rose up on to his feet.
"I will go to grandfather," he said, very low. "He is always good: perhaps he could save it."
Loud blows with the heavy iron knocker of the house-door drowned his words. A strange voice called aloud through the keyhole:
"Let me in! Quick!—there is no time to lose! More snow like this, and the roads will be all blocked. Let me in. Do you hear? I am come to take the great stove."
August sprang erect, his fists doubled, his eyes blazing.
"You shall never touch it!" he screamed; "you shall never touch it!" ”

“ In the august sepulchre wherein those whom You had laden with benefits have confined You, wrapped in the sweet spices of the lamentation and the love of Your sons, You also descend into the abyss of society as now existing, and there does Your voice resound, casting down the demons of sect, and consoling those who anxious and trembling await the blessed hour when with You they are to rise again. ”

“ March will bluster, April will weep; May will smile through her tears by day and freeze us with her frosts at night, and July will stupefy us with thunderstorms, and August scorch us with heat one day and drench us to the skin the next. ”

“ A WET AUGUST
NINE drops of water bead the jessamine,
And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:
—'Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine—
When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles. ”

“ Why, one branch of hawthorn against the sky promises more than all the summers of time can pay, and a pond ablaze with yellow lilies awakens such answering splendours and enchantments in mortal bosoms,—blazons, it would seem, so august a message from the hidden heart of the world,—that ever afterwards, for one who has looked upon it, the most fortunate human existence must seem a disappointment. ”

“ Whoever has dwelt with trees knows how differently the small leaves of May talk from the draped and weighted boughs of August.
Stepping along the rustling wood road, you can hear the reveries of the leaves around you. They whisper and sigh in youth; they reach out to touch the friendly stranger’s cheek. ”

“ He is familiar to us all, that hovering "rattler" above the hot, dusty road of August, flying up from nowhere beneath our feet in the path, fluttering like a yellow moth, and always disappearing before our eyes when he alights. ”

“ Or a dark line of ducks will come in across the islands
And sail overhead to the marshes of the west.
Now a little wind rises up for our returning;
Silver grows the East as the West grows grey;
Shadows on the waters, shaded are the meadows,
The firs on the hillside—naught so dark as they.
Yet we have known the light!—Was ever such an August?
Your hand leave mine; and the new stars gleam
As we separately go to our dreams of opened heaven,—
The golden dawn shall tell you that you did not dream.
VI. TO AUTUMN.
How shall I greet thee, Autumn? ”

“ August, hot and sunny, is reigning with quite a mad merriment, making the most of the days that be, knowing full well that the end of the summer is nigh. The air is stifling; up from the warm earth comes the almost overpowering perfume of the late flowers. Perpetua moving amongst the carnations and hollyhocks in her soft white cambric frock, gathers a few of the former in a languid manner to place in the bosom of her frock. ”

“ Not so—the all-benignant skies
Rebuked that fear of famished eyes—
July passed on with showers and dew
And August glowed in showerless blue;
No harvest time could be more fair
Had harvest fruits but ripened there. ”

“ August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the children stories, his own little brown face growing red with excitement as his imagination glowed to fever heat. That human being on the panels, who was drawn there as a baby in a cradle, as a boy playing among flowers, as a lover sighing under a casement, as a soldier in the midst of strife, as a father with children round him, as a weary, old, blind man on crutches, and, lastly, as a ransomed soul raised up by angels, had always had the most intense interest for August, and he had made, not one history for him, but a thousand ”

“ June came and went, followed by July and August, with their burning splendor of sunlight and heat. Many of the flowers bloomed in sweetness for a little while, and then dropped their leaves and died to earthly things, and passed away to the heaven where flowers bloom forever. Others, fragrant and fresh and fair, came to take their places, and so the whole world was sweet until the autumn came. ”

“ We look forward to the Day of the Lord of which that terrible day of judgment, to which their thoughts were first turned, was only a dim foreshadowing—a Day far more august in its nature, far more awful in its accompaniments, far more terrible in its aspect to those who are unprepared for it, yet full of glory and of joy to those who "love His appearing." ”

“ Edmund Spenser.
In August
All the long August afternoon,
The little drowsy stream
Whispers a melancholy tune,
As if it dreamed of June,
And whispered in its dream.
The thistles show beyond the brook
Dust on their down and bloom,
And out of many a weed-grown nook
The aster flowers look
With eyes of tender gloom.
The silent orchard aisles are sweet
With smell of ripening fruit.
Through the sere grass, in shy retreat
Flutter, at coming feet,
The robins strange and mute.
[Pg 15]
There is no wind to stir the leaves,
The harsh leaves overhead ”

“ The eye of the gazer must ITSELF brim with a "purple light," intense enough to perpetuate the brief flower-flush of August on the heather, or the rare sunset-smile of June; out of his heart must well the freshness, that in latter spring and early summer brightens the bracken, nurtures the moss, and cherishes the starry flowers that spangle for a few weeks the pasture of the moor-sheep. ”

“ During these October nights the moon has reached its fulness and the earth been flooded with beauty.
Our bed is placed near a window; and as the planet sinks across the sky its rays stream through the open shutter and fall upon Georgiana in her sleep. Sometimes I lie awake for the sole chance of seeing them float upon her hair, pass lingeringly across her face, and steal holily downward along her figure. How august she is in her purity! The whiteness of the fairest cloud that brushes the silvering orb is as pitch to the whiteness of her nature. ”

“ Their skins; and pearled with dew
These damsons, violet-blue.
(While September is speaking, August lifts the basket to the ground, selects various fruits, and withdraws slowly along the gravel walk, eating a pear as he goes.)
September.
My song is half a sigh
Because my green leaves die;
Sweet are my fruits, but all my leaves are dying;
And well may Autumn sigh,
And well may I
Who watch the sere leaves flying.
My leaves that fade and fall,
I note you one and all;
I call you, and the autumn wind is calling,
Lamenting for your fall,
And for the pall
You spread on earth in falling. ”

“ These indeed were so blended, so subdued into a glorious and god-like serenity, that this creation of human genius, like the august being of which it was a mute type, possessed in a degree the celestial power of chasing away sadness and sorrow, and shedding benignity and happiness over all who beheld it. ”

“ An August sun quickly disperses the gossamer clouds, unveiling for us the scene of yesterday in its morning sharpness of outline, with high lights and deep shadows in the foreground, and with a soft, illusory glimmer in the deep distance. ”

“ But the fresh, rich harvest month of August soon gave him back the life he had (so to speak) played away; and when the gleaming morning was come in earnest, the earth was lying all lighted up with a new-fallen thunderstorm, now emitting lovely lightning only from drops hanging on the corn-ears, as if over-silvered by the moon. It was a new earth; he was a new creature, just burst, with ripened pinions, through the egg-shell of the coffin. ”

“ But one fine August morning I found myself awake
My birthday:—By Jove, I'm forty! Yes, forty, and no mistake!
Why, this is the very milestone, I think I used to hold,
That when a fellow had come to, a fellow would then be old!
But that is the young folks' nonsense; they're full of their
foolish stuff;
A man's in his prime at forty,—I see that plain enough;
At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray;
I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say.
At last comes another August with mist and rain and shine ”

“ There is no month in the whole year in which nature wears a more beautiful appearance than in the month of August. Spring has many beauties, and May is a fresh and blooming month, but the charms of this time of year are enhanced by their contrast with the winter season. ”

“ As the Heaven-Shining-Great-August deity sat in her awful weaving-hall seeing to the weaving of the august garments of the deities, he broke a hole in the top of the weaving-hall, and through it let fall a heavenly piebald horse which he had flayed with a backward flaying, at whose sight the women weaving the heavenly garments were so much alarmed they died of fear. ”

“ In July and August you may safely let your eyes wander from the rosary to the beds of summer annuals, the gladioli, Japan lilies, and Dahlias, and depend for fragrance on your bed of sweet odours. But as the nights begin to lengthen, at the end of August, you may prepare for a tea-rose festival, if you have a little forethought and a very little money.
You have, I think, a florist in your neighbourhood who raises roses for the market. ”

“ How many a man at the end of July or the beginning of August, worn out with his work in Parliament, or the Law Courts, or elsewhere, turns his face and his thoughts to the North, and finds even in his anticipations and dreams of the days to come refreshment and solace! ”

“ The rich glow of summer is seldom in perfection till August. We now enjoy settled hot weather, a glowing sky, with varied and beautiful, but not many clouds, and delightfully fragrant and cool evenings. The golden yellow of the ripe corn, the idea of plenty inspired by the commencing harvest of wheat, the full and mature appearance of the foliage, in short the tout ensemble of nature at this time is more pleasing than perhaps that of any of the other summer months. ”

“ When August days are hot an' dry,
When burning copper is the sky,
I 'd rather fish than feast or fly
In airy realms serene and high.
I 'd take a suit not made for looks,
Some easily digested books,
Some flies, some lines, some bait, some hooks,
Then would I seek the bays and brooks. ”