September

“ May and June are months of joy, but September is the month of ‘dreames’ and ‘darke fyre.’ Ask those who love nature as the poet [Pg 235] is supposed to love her, with something of ecstasy perhaps, certainly with underglow of passion: ask those in whom the imagination is as a quickening and waning but never absent flame: ask this man who travels from month to month seeking what he shall never find, or this woman whose memories and dreams are many, howsoever few her hopes ... and the chance will be that if asked to name the month of the heart’s love, it will be September. ”

“ And if September is not so bright with promise, and so buoyant with hope, as May, it is even more embued with that spirit of serene repose, in which the only true, because the only continuous enjoyment consists. Spring ‘never is, but always to be blest;’ but September is the month of consummations—the fulfiller of all promises—the fruition of all hopes—the era of all completeness. ”

“ Over all broods a haze, gossamer and fairy-light, but still a haze which ever follows in the footsteps of sweet September—September so quiet, so peaceful, so mellow and rounded. September is to May as mature and still beautiful womanhood is to the freshness of girlhood, not so radiant, but so complete, so satisfyingly lovely. Spring somehow, I know not why, gives me an ache at the heart, creates within me a yearning for something. ”

“ It is that sweetest month of the twelve, September—a glorious ripe September, that has never yet appeared so sweet and golden-brown as on this afternoon, that brings us so near the close of it. High in the trees hang clusters of filberts, that have tempted our imagination for some time, and now, with a basket slung between us, that links us as we walk, we meditate a raid. ”

“ With the fragrance of ripening fruit, and the warmth of the brick wall about me,—September is September everywhere,—I sit here upon my own threshold, a worn old threshold made wise by the coming and going of life through unnumbered years. There is something comforting about a place where many lives have been lived; the windows have a strange air of wisdom, as if experience itself were looking out. ”

“ It is all we have to remind us of royalty in America, with the exception, perhaps, of the case now and then where a king full busts a bob-tail flush.
A Mountain Snowstorm.
September does not always indicate golden sunshine, and ripening corn, and old gold pumpkin pies on the half-shell. We look upon it as the month of glorious perfection in the handiwork of the seasons and the time when the ripened fruits are falling; when the red sun hides behind the bronze and misty evening, and says good night with reluctance to the beautiful harvests and the approaching twilight of the year. ”

“ In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysées illuminated; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fire-works? They are gala-nights, these last of September; Paris may well dance, and the Universe: the Edifice of the Constitution is completed! Completed; nay revised, to see that there was nothing insufficient in it; solemnly proferred to his Majesty; solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the fourteenth of the month. ”

“ September brings a day or two of gentle rain; and then a change, as sweet and mysterious as the breaking of spring in the East, passes over the hills. The green grows through the brown and the flowers begin to come out. ”

“ This first of September has come upon us in kingly state, with mantle of azure and broad level sunbeams, with soft wooing breath and dew-spangled grass and leaf, and as I lean out of my window in the still early freshness of the morning, and look abroad at the beauty of hill and valley, land and sea, I marvel to myself whether the pretty brown birds are up and about, preening themselves in the sunshine, tasting of the gleaming dew, as happy and careless and ignorant to-day as they have been all through their short, merry, pleasant young lives. ”

“ And it was part of this drama of love and scent and color that they should see it slowly assume the more ethereal loveliness of September, and watch the subtle amber rays shine through the thinning boughs, and feel that all nature was becoming idealized. ”

“ It was the week before Hugh John went to college that what I am going to tell took place. September is almost always nice about Edam—with the corn standing white in stooks all down the valley, waving blonde half-way up the sides of the wide glen, and looking over into it from the heights of Kingside still as green as grass. Yes, in our part September is wonderfully quiet and windless—generally, that is. Yet withal, there is the stir of harvest about the farm-town, the merry whirr of the "reaper" over the hedge, and always the clatter of voices as the workers go homeward in the twilight. ”

“ But when the summer is over, when the majesty of July and August is past and gone and golden September gives place to rainy October, or, most of all, when dull, gloomy November covers the skies with its impenetrable veil of drab cloud and mist day after day and week after week, with scarcely an hour of sunshine, the utter dismalness and ugliness of the place are appalling. ”

“ Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky. While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple tree. ”

“ The last days of September! and every day the light dies a few minutes earlier. At half-past five one perceives a chilliness about one's feet; no doubt there is a touch of frost in the air; that is why the leaves hang so plaintively. ”

“ There is great pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. ”

“ The milkweed pods fray out their early floss upon September breezes, and the blue petals of the gentian first unfold their fringes. October overwhelms us with the friendly tokens of bur-marigolds and bidens; while its thickets of black-alder lose their autumn verdure, and leave November with a “burning bush” of scarlet berries hitherto half-hidden in the leafage. ”

“ Frost enough for another crop of crystals on the meadows but none on the forests. The gentians, goldenrods, asters, etc., don’t seem to feel it; neither petals nor leaves are touched though they seem so tender. Every day opens and closes like a flower, noiseless, effortless. Divine peace glows on all the majestic landscape like the silent enthusiastic joy that sometimes transfigures a noble human face.
September 1. Clouds .05—motionless, of no particular color—ornaments with no hint of rain or snow in them. ”

“ September yields with more increase the fruit. Sweetest, you have in bosom, Beauty's Bowers, Both these sweet tides: whence forth they always shoot Both flower and fruit. All only you, alone, Can give me, when you please; or else can none. O dainty bosom, bosom rich in price, Surmounting mountains huge of beaten gold; Whose whiteness braves the whitest snow that lies On highest hills, whose height none can behold. In you, my soul doth hope, without annoy, Both Spring and Harvest, one day to enjoy. ”

“ Open; that I may laugh, and lightly take
All air of early April in one hour.
But brown curls, O shadow me with curls,
Full of September mist, half-gleam, half-glower,
And I shall roam warm nights in lands far south. ”

“ Such glowing poets as Spenser and Thomson threw a warmer tint into their pictures of the season. But, strange to say, while paying her this compliment, they became untrue to nature—they robbed Summer to deck Autumn in her spoils. They both—British poets, as they were—put off the grain-harvest until September, when in truth the wheat-sheaf belongs especially to August, in England; that month
is given up to its labors, and it is only the very last sheaves which are gathered in September. ”

“ CHAPTER XLI. THE THUNDER-STORM.
The fine September morning had turned to a rainy afternoon. A heavy mist hung upon the trees, the hedges, the ground; something like the mist which had fallen upon Lionel Verner’s spirit. The day had grown more like a November one: the clouds were leaden-coloured, the rain fell; even the little birds sought the shelter of their nests.
One there was who walked in it, his head uncovered, his brow bared. Not a bird, but a man. ”

“ But November has come; and the calm quiet hectic of September and the hale vigour of October have now passed away. The rain has sodden and struck down leaf after leaf, heaping the roadside, until you might count the leaves left upon the trees that edge the lanes. A sense of bareness and desolation oppresses you, and an aspect of dreariness and moist death has overspread the landscape. You walk into the garden: the dahlias are blackened with the frosts of October; the pinched geraniums, verbenas, heliotropes, lie wrecked on the beds ”

“ It is a September morning, and all Nature is filled with harmony. Not a leaf that rustles on the air, nor a brook that babbles by, nor a bird that whistles in the wood, nor the voice of a child singing from the overflowing gladness of its heart, but is sweeter to their ear, and more soothing to their souls, than the music of a Garcia. ”

“ Sam Mullet, the clerk, was for setting the bells to ring beforehand.
Some people think September the pleasantest month in the year, when the heats of summer have passed and the frosts of winter have not come. Never a finer September than we had that autumn at Timberdale; the skies looked bright, the leaves of the trees were putting on their tints of many colours, and the land was not yet quite shorn of its golden grain.
All the world was looking out for William Brook. He did not come. Disappointment is the lot of man. ”

“ The wild sounds streamed on the crisp morning air—'twas one of those September days whose mature beauty rivals the budding grace of spring—with a strange wayward beauty, a barbaric grandeur, that carried away both our heart and ears; and we enjoyed it to the full as much as did the steed of a military lady present, that verily danced with the tingling delight. ”

“ In September we should have cycled along beautiful autumn-scented lanes, dismounting at Oxshott, and wading ankle-deep through the pine woods, would have silently thanked Cod for the flaming beauty of the birches silhouetted against the quiet sky. In November we should have tidied up our garden and planted our bulbs for the spring—crocuses and daffodils, especially daffodils, for do we not love them best of all the spring flowers? ”

“ Come back with the wind, and are themes of the rhyme
⁠In the waves of the ocean.
We, having a secret to others unknown,
⁠In the cool mountain-mosses,
May whisper together, September, alone
⁠Of our loves and our losses! ”

“ It was one of those perfect September days when the air is still warm, when a thin haze is hanging over all the land, when there is no sound to be heard but now and then the chirp of a bird, or the far-off lowing of cattle—a day in which it is enough, and more than enough, to sit still and drink in the silent influences of earth and heaven, when anything like occupation seems an insult to the sweetness and beauty of nature. ”

“ In brisk wind of September The heavy-headed fruits Shake upon their bending boughs And drop from the shoots; Some glow golden in the sun, Some show green and streaked Some set forth a purple bloom, Some blush rosy-cheeked. In strong blast of October At the equinox, Stirred up in his hollow bed Broad ocean rocks; Plunge the ships on his bosom, Leaps and plunges the foam,-- It's O for mothers' sons at sea, That they were safe at home! In slack wind of November The fog forms and shifts; All the world comes out again When the fog lifts. Loosened from their sapless twigs Leaves drop with every gust ”

“ The heat of the September sun above, ray-filtered by the feathery firs, is caught in these yellow leaves that hold back the last of its fire and set the place about with a cool, holy glow, an illumination that is like a presence before which one must bow down in reverent adoration. After all it is not a defeat that has come to the fiery forces of summer that have so well held the hills ”

“ In the ensuing month, September, the sun will appear like a black dragon; cruel winds will blow, the sea will roar, and men will be knocked to pieces by the wind. The sun will then be turned to blood; that betokeneth war in the East and West. A mighty emperor will die; the earth will quake, and few men will remain alive. ”

“ In this still, enfolding weather a quiet companionship is very grateful. Autumn creeps through everything. The little damsons in the pudding taste of September, and are fragrant with memory. The voices of those at table are softer and more reminiscent than at haytime. ”

“ Death to thy cares, refreshing to the soul.
43
Here fixt to-day in plenty's smiling vales,
Just as the month revolves we laugh or groan,
September comes, seas swell with horrid gales,
And old Port Royal's fate may be our own. ”

“ Hunt further observes that, September, though its mornings and evenings are apt to be chill and foggy, and therefore not wholesome to those who either do not, or cannot, guard against them, is generally a serene and pleasant month, partaking of the warmth of summer and the vigour of autumn. ”

“ September has come; plump and strong seven of you there are; the evening is calm and beautiful; you spread out your wings, reach with some difficulty a proper height, and swift as meteors glide through the air, until, meeting with warmer waters, you alight on them, and there remain for a season. ”