The Seasons

“ There is much that is beautiful in the mythopœic representation of the seasons. All winter, says the legend, the sweet sunshine is chased by the relentless storm, now hiding beneath the clouds, now below the hills, showing herself for a moment merely to flee again. But, finally becoming bolder, the Sunshine advances to meet the Storm, who, captivated by her beauty, woos her as he pursues her, and wins her for his bride. Then is there great rejoicing upon the earth, and from their union are born plants which spring from its surface and spangle it with flowers. ”

“ And the soul moves in the circle of the seasons; not only has human life its Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; in the long three score years and ten, it swings through this circle with each succeeding procession of seasons, and experiences the changing impressions they so rapidly bring. ”

“ Yet we behold his sun rising upon the just, and upon the unjust, we have the regular return of the seasons: "He gives us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." ”

“ Of all the seasons of the year there’s none
To melancholy people, like the fall,
That is, to persons of poetic mind,
For in this season they a beauty find
In earth and sky, which is transcending all{21}
The wondrous glory of the summer gone.
For all its mellow beauty has a sadness,
Twixt tears and smiles, a sadness seen and heard
In nature’s varied aspects and its notes,
Upon the air’s dim haziness it floats:
The shrill cry of the migratory bird,
And tunes of vintage-reapers in their gladness. ”

“ Of all these Seasons there is none that can vie with the Spring for Beauty and Delightfulness. It bears the same Figure among the Seasons of the Year, that the Morning does among the Divisions of the Day, or Youth among the Stages of Life. ”

“ The seasons and all their changes are in me. ”

“ THE GARDEN IN SPRING The dividing line between the seasons is, of course, quite arbitrary, for Nature progresses evenly, gradually, unceasingly, and not in the jerky way which our clumsy divisions of time imply. Still it is convenient, almost necessary indeed, to adopt some such broad classification of the periods of the year as that into the four seasons which has done duty for so many centuries. One may take the flowering of the snowdrop to indicate the onset of spring, though itself belonging more especially to winter. ”

“ Four seasons fill the measure of the year ;
There are four seasons in the mind of man.
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span.
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
His nearest unto heaven. ”

“ Every grand and beautiful appearance in Nature, that distinguishes one portion of the annual circuit from another, is a proper source of materials for the Poet of the Seasons. Of these, some are obvious to the common observer, and require only justness and elegance of taste for the selection: others discover themselves only to the mind opened and enlarged by science and philosophy. ”

“ The very seasons of the year—each has its Jack-o'lantern. The bright glancing sunshine of a spring morning, when it tempts us into a sharp east-wind under promise of sultriness;—the rich luxuriousness of summer, when it fills us with aches and cramps, after revelling in romps among the grass. ”

“ The cycles of Time roll with the procession of seasons. Spring is bloom; summer is growth; autumn is fruition; winter is the shroud, and beneath its cold, yet kindly fold, live the germs of a new life. ”

“ For flowers we are given stars, for the song of birds the music of the spheres, and for that human glow a spiritual ecstasy.
Similarly with winter. It has indeed a strange beauty peculiar to itself, but it is a beauty we must be at some pains to enjoy. The beauty of the other seasons comes to us, offers itself to us, without effort. To study the beauty of summer, it is enough to lie under green boughs with half-closed eyes, and listen to the running stream and the murmur of a million wings. ”

“ But these seasons are subject to variations with different men, as with different years. The summer of one man is all bright and calm--a lapse of tranquil sunshine, and soft airs, and gentle dews. With another, the same season passes in the thunder-storm of passion--the tempests of war or ambition--and often, the gloomy days of autumn or of winter overshadowed the rich land, and spoiled the promised harvest.
It was an autumn-like period during the next three or four months of the family of Sir Philip Hastings. ”

“ Nature, with cunning artifice, escapes from dull monotony by her wondrous change of seasons, with their varying aspects. Shall we look for these alternations in the circuit of the year, and not in the course of a long life? The spring brings flowers and the new leaves of the trees, the summer is rich in its harvest, autumn in fruit, and then comes winter with its snows. ”

“ No, it is only when we are older, and would seem, therefore, to be more impressionable to the changes of the seasons, that we regard winter merely as an incident having its rightful place among the other incidents of life. ”

“ The fountain niches of the Seasons in the Court of the Four Seasons are graced by Milton Herbert Bancroft's appropriate panels. Two of these, one on each wall of the fountain niche, are devoted to each season. One represents the pleasures that that period of the year brings forth for man; the other shows the duties it demands of him. In "Spring," we have the poet's conception of the time of blossoms and garlands, of young loves, piping shepherds and dancing maidens, while the goddess of the season dreams of coming glories. ”

“ Why shouldn’t one write about the seasons, I wonder. There is scarcely anything more important, or more universally interesting, than the weather. Ten to one it was the first thing we all thought of this morning. ”

“ The cold, cheerless, and sluggish Winter has almost without a metaphor been termed the decrepid and hoary old age of the year, pursued through its changing seasons, is that of an individual, whose existence is marked by a progressive course from its origin to its termination. It is thus represented by our Poet; this idea preserves an unity and connexion through his whole work; and the accurate observer will remark a beautiful chain of circumstances in his description, by wich the birth, vigour, decline, and extinction of the vital principle of the year are pictured in the most lively manner. ”

“ When he mentions the times are determined, it is not to be understood of the seasons of the year, which God has fixed to return in their certain courses, but the seasons appointed for every work, or for every occurrence of life ”

“ Spring, while the harbinger and preparation of the ensuing seasons, is itself the consummation of a long series of wonderful processes, wrought in the silence and darkness of winter, and largely beneath the surface of the earth. We never see the actual beginning of anything. ”

“ It is the event which concerns us rather than the season, whether Spring or Summer, or Autumn or Winter. What imports the season of the year to Him who "has all seasons for His own"? What matters it whether the star in the East shone on harvest fields or on wintry snows, so that it but led the wandering Magi till it came and stood over where the young child was? As to the month or the day, that is a minor point on which we are not careful to answer — content to accept the day which has been observed for centuries as that of our Redeemer's birth. ”

“ Spring has been represented as the youth of the years—the season of pleasing hope, lively energy, and rapid increase. Summer has keen resembled to perfect manhood—the season of steady warmth, confirmed strength, and unremitting vigour. Autumn, which while it bestows the rich products of full maturity, is yet ever hastening to decline, has been aptly compared to that period, when the man, mellowed by age, yields the most valuable fruits of experience and wisdom, but daily exhibits increasing symptoms of decay. ”

“ So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten. ”

“ This distinction of seasons is produced only by imagination operating on luxury. To temperance every day is bright, and every hour is propitious to diligence. He that shall resolutely excite his faculties, or exert his virtues, will soon make himself superior to the seasons, and may set at defiance the morning mist, and the evening damp, the blasts of the east, and the clouds of the south. ”

“ This succession of the seasons is as regular and distinct as our winter and summer. The effect of the long dry season corresponds in some respects to our winter, giving vegetation a rest. Europeans delight in the dry season, although towards the last they long for the rain. ”

“ In all the temperate climates of the globe, the four seasons are so many progressive stages in this circuit, which, like the acts in a well-constructed drama, gradually disclose, ripen, and bring to an end the various business transacted on the great theatre of nature. The striking analogy which this period with its several divisions bears to the course of human existence, has been remarked and pursued by writers of all ages and countries. ”

“ Poor Robin can sing in a leafless tree,
⁠And love e'en the dreariest season.
Then ever be merry—a lesson take now,
⁠That well ye may aye remember;
A contented heart and a cloudless brow
Can light life's shadowy path with a glow,
⁠Like sunshine in dim November.
AUTUMN SCENES AND FLOWERS.
To the mind accustomed to contemplate and enjoy Nature, every season is so full of beauty, that in describing or alluding to them successively, we unconsciously give to each a seeming preference. ”

“ The true seasons blossom or wilt not in fixed order but so that many of them may pass in a few weeks or hours whereas sometimes a whole life passes and the season remains of a piece from one end to the other. ”

“ All that can be safely propounded on such a subject is that the sequence of seasons is a constant and infallible phenomenon of Nature in that condition of our planet with which alone we have, or can have, any acquaintance. ”

“ Taking, indeed, a broad view of festivals throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and seeks to assist it; [130] the vernal equinox, the period of germination and the return of life; the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its height; and autumn, the period of fruition, of thankfulness, and of repose. But it is rarely that we find a people seriously celebrating more than two of these festival seasons. ”

“ In this land, where the four seasons are clearly and distinctly defined, spring comes to us with a beauty unknown to those who dwell in lands which do not possess such unmistakable divisions of the year. ”

“ Whatever may be the changes produced by man, the eternal round of the seasons is unbroken. ”

“ Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
Not a mouse can scurry, not a chestnut drop, not a wind whisper among these new-fallen leaves without discovery; even a weasel cannot dart across the moon-washed path and not leave a streak of brown upon the silver, plain enough to follow.
A morning in May is best of all the year to be afield with the birds; but to watch for the wild four-footed things, a moonlight night in October is the choice of the seasons. May-time is bird-time. ”

“ By an easy and natural transition, he quits the chastized summer of our temperate clime for those regions where a perpetual summer reigns, exalted by such superior degrees of solar heat as give an entirely new face to almost every part of Nature. The terrific grandeur prevalent in some of these, the exquisite richness and beauty in others, and the novelty in all, afford such a happy variety for the poet's selection, that we need not wonder if some of his noblest pieces are the product of this delightful excursion. ”

“ I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year; ”

“ But it is in the extraordinary changes and agitations which the elements, and the surrounding atmosphere undergo during this season, that the poet of nature must principally look for relief from the gloomy uniformity reigning through other parts of the creation. Here scenes are presented to his view, which, were they less frequent, must strike with wonder and admiration the most incurious spectator. The effects of cold are more hidden, and in many instances more extraordinary and unexpected than those of heat. ”

“ It is remarkable, that in order to produce something of a similar effect in his Summer, a season which, on account of its uniformity of character, does not admit of any strongly-marked gradations, he has comprized the whole of his description within the limits of a single day, pursuing the course of the sun from its rising to its setting. A Summer's day is, in reality, a just model of the entire season. ”

“ The change from an imagined chaos into a divinely-ordered cosmos is not necessarily coincident with the interchange of seasons, and especially the transition from Winter to Spring, upon the planet Earth. ”

“ To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. ”

“ As to the phrase 'Winter is come and gone,' see the note (p. 111) on 'Grief made the young Spring wild.'
1. 5. Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier. This phrase is barely consistent with the statement (st. 16) as to Spring throwing down her kindling buds. Perhaps, moreover, it was an error of print to give 'Seasons' in the plural: 'Season's' (meaning winter) would seem more accurate. A somewhat similar idea is conveyed in one of Shelley's lyrics, Autumn, a Dirge, written in 1820:—
'And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.'
1. ”

“ Our seasons have no fixed returns,
Without our will they come and go;
At noon our sudden summer burns,
Ere sunset all is snow. ”

“ As the beams of the sun become more potent, the larger vegetables, shrubs and trees, unfold their leaves; and as soon as a friendly concealment is by their means provided for the various nations of the feathered race, they joyfully begin the course of laborious, but pleasing occupations, which are to engage them during the whole season. ”