Season

“ You have in your climate genial and joyous spring, when nature revives from the dead and puts on her youthful and gay apparel, when the thorn, the citron, and the apple-tree bud and blossom;—beautiful is your spring, the loveliest and most charming season of your year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season—delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. ”

“ This season is suggestive of thoughts and feelings which are not called forth by any other; standing, as it were, a pause between life and death; holding in its lap the consummate fruits of the earth, which are culled by the hand of prudence and judgment, some to be garnered in the treasury of useful things, while others are allowed to return to their primitive elements. When spring comes smiling o'er the earth, she breathes on the ice-bound waters, and they flow anew. Frost and snow retreat before her advancing footsteps. ”

“ Here, for a considerable part of the year you are chilled by frosts and snows, and scarcely behold the presence of the sun, during that gloomy season which is called the winter. With us, the sun is always present, pouring out light and heat, and scorching us with his fiercest beams. In my country we know no difference between the length of nights and days; all are of equal length throughout the year, and present not that continual variety which you see here; we have neither ice, nor frost, nor snow; the trees never lose their leaves, and we have fruits in every season of the year. ”

“ Sometimes, when the country is covered with snow and the air is fresh and keen and healthful, I think there is no part of the year more enjoyable than winter; then when spring comes, and the buds start and the leaves are growing, I feel like a young colt ready to caper and kick up my heels. When the flowers are in bloom and the birds are singing I think there is no season like summer. ”

“ It was autumn—late autumn—that loveliest season of the American year, when the wild woods appeal painted, and Nature seems to repose after her annual toil—when all her creatures, having feasted at the full banquet she has so lavishly laid out for them, appear content and happy. ”

“ Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek!
I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another, panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard. ”

“ The year now waxing stronger, after the Spring, passes into the Summer; and in its youth it becomes robust. And indeed no season is there more vigorous, or more fruitful, or which glows with greater warmth. ”

“ Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. ”

“ Who does not love spring, the most joyful season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. ”

“ They are in their pristine freshness scintillating with that adhesive frost on simple summer flowers so entirely metaphorical of the season. Their dainty, artistic, and useful calendars inspire one with a cheerful fascination to begin the New Year. ”

“ As the years pass, the miracle of the seasons means less to us. But what country boy can forget the turning of the leaves from green to gold, and the watchings and waitings for the first hard frost that ushers in the nutting season! ”

“ The American autumn, or fall, as we poetically and affectionately term this generous and mellow season among ourselves, is thought to be unsurpassed, in its warm and genial lustre, its bland and exhilarating airs, and its admirable constancy, by the decline of the year in nearly every other portion of the earth. ”

“ You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. Only the rarest flower, the purest melody of the season, thus comes down to us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The whole of the summer season is spent out of doors, in brief flights from one refreshment-bar to the next. When autumn comes, with its game, she makes her way into our houses and remains until the hard frosts. ”

“ RAINY SEASON—CULTIVATING ABANDONED FIELDS—DON FULGENCIO’S MODE—FIRST SUMMER AT DESENGAÑO—BOOKS.
Summer on a sugar-plantation is what is known in common parlance as the “dead season.” The days are long and hot. Work begins before the dawn, pauses at midday, and ends when it is too dark to see. And the latter is an uncertain hour, for the radiance of the moon in that latitude is quite surprising. The middle of the summer’s day is devoted to rest. From the tap of the great bell at noon, to two taps at 3 P. M., no work is done, everybody eats and sleeps. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spring and morning, summer and noon, autumn and evening, winter and night, are coupled together, as if each season was specially characterised by a single portion of the day, selected for no other reason than because the order of succession is the same. ”

“ The gross summer of the year is only a halting counterpart of those fiery days of secret triumph which in reality themselves paint the year as if upon a parchment, giving each season a mockery of the [86] warmth or frozeness which is within ourselves. ”

“ As hay and grass and herbs are taken in their season, so it is the season in all things that is to be taken. And, therefore, when the season appeareth, let not thy negligence appear in omitting it; when occasion shows itself, show not thyself careless in apprehending of it; when the fruit of opportunity is to be gathered, climb the mountain speedily.—Jermin. ”

“ Winter is the season of the year when the ground is white with snow.
Spring is the season when the snow melts off and the birds come.
Summer is the season when all plants grow.
Fall, or autumn is the season when the leaves turn, and fall. ”

“ Then followed that beautiful season,
Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Summer of All-Saints!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. ”

“ Autumn was falling, but the pine
Seem'd as it mock'd all change; no sign
Of season on its leaf was seen,
The same dark gloom of changeless green.
But like the gorgeous Persian bands
'Mid the stern race of northern lands,
The chesnut boughs were bright with all
That gilds and mocks the autumn's fall. ”

“ To me there is no season so lovely as the autumn. There is a gaiety about the spring with which I have no sympathy: its perpetual revival of leaf and bloom is too great a contrast to the inner world, where so many feelings lie barren, and so many hopes withered. There is an activity about it, from which the wearied spirits shrink; and a joyousness, which but makes you turn more sadly upon yourself; but about autumn there is a tender melancholy inexpressibly soothing; decay is around, but such is in your own heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows, and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each season in its turn brings its fill of satisfaction, and winter or summer we regret to look forward to change, because we feel never quite sure that the season which is coming will be half so attractive as the season which we now enjoy. ”

“ We know, indeed, that spring visits that region of the world—as far, at least, as the British boundary line. We could be made, upon reflection, to presume that the grass grows, and the sun shines there—the farmers are warm in haying-time, and the flowers come to maturity in season for the bees to provide against winter ”

“ It is the season now to go
About the country high and low,
Among the lilacs hand in hand,
And two by two in fairy land. ”

“ The winter drew on—a season as different from the summer in those northern latitudes, as if it belonged to another solar system. Cold and stormy, it is yet full of delight for all beings that can either romp, sleep, or think it through. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 the spring, when the dry season set in and no rain for seven months, and fields dried up with a dusty brown, he fled to the tops of the mountains to browse on the leaves of the trees to support life until the next rainy season commenced. ”

“ The opportunity has always been mine of noting the changing of the seasons—the virgin green and promise of spring, the glory and fullness of summer, the russet and gold of autumn, the sleep and decay of winter—and each, to him who can see aright, has a beauty and significance of its own. ”

“ He says:—"Our winters are much milder than those of the continent, but our summers are colder." "In this country it cannot be said that we enjoy the season of spring until the portion of the year so denominated has passed. ”

“ Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. ”

“ The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale.
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs. ”

“ Spring is characterized as the season of the renovation of Nature; in which animals and vegetables, excited by the kindly influence of returning warmth, shake off the torpid inaction of Winter, and prepare for the continuance and increase of their several species. The vegetable tribes, as more independent and self- provided, lead the way in this progress. The poet, accordingly, begins with representing the reviviscent plants emerging, as soon as genial showers have softened the ground, in numbers "beyond the power of botanist to reckon up their tribes." ”