Sept

“ The spring of the year in the sky, and on the river, and on the land. September at its happiest, fresh and young, and gladdening as a maiden stepping with shining eyes and light feet into a world that she knows she is going to brighten. ”

“ The times of the Birth and Passion of Christ, with such like niceties, being not material to religion, were little regarded by the Christians of the first age. They who began first to celebrate them, placed them in the cardinal periods of the year; as the annunciation of the Virgin Mary, on the 25th of March, which when Julius Cæsar corrected the Calendar was the vernal Equinox; the feast of John Baptist on the 24th of June, which was the summer Solstice; the feast of St. Michael on Sept. 29, which was the autumnal Equinox; and the birth of Christ on the winter Solstice, Decemb. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While the Earl of Cromartie and other clan historians accept the Fitzgerald origin by marriage with a daughter of Kenneth Matheson of Lochalsh, the Mathesons maintain that the first Mackenzie, or Mac Choinnich - the actual progenitor of the clan - was a son of their chief, Coinneach Gruamach, and that the Mackenzies are thus only a sept, or minor branch of the Mathesons. ”

“ And all the youth are now a nutting gone.”
It appears, from a curious manuscript relating to Eton school, that in the month of September, “on a certain day,” most probably the fourteenth, the scholars there were to have a play-day, in order to go out and gather nuts, a portion of which, when they returned, they were to make presents of to the different masters; but before leave was granted for their excursion, they were required to write verses on the fruitfulness of autumn, and the deadly cold of the coming winter. [322]
“Tuesday, Sept. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Gods so wills it, toward the end of September, there will come one sent from heaven to make our beautiful life still more beautiful, to draw the bond closer and tighter that already binds us together. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is only when hazy September flashes forth her first faint signals of nearing Autumn that the reign of literature begins anew and comes rapidly into its own as the nights gradually chill and lengthen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I see two men, whether in a market-room, by the way-side, in a parlour, in a church-yard, or even in the church itself, engaged in manifestly deep and most momentous discourse, I will, if it be any time between September and February, bet ten to one, that it is, in some way or other, about the game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 was one of those early September days, the best of all in the western country, when the light falls less fiercely through a soft haze that seems to fill the air about you, and that grows into purple on the far hilltops. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A Spring Prelude Before the Blossom Love in the Calendar A September Violet September's Eve October In November On Nearing Washington "As a Bell in a Chime" In the Dark Good Measure of Love Noblesse Oblige On a Candidate Accused of Youth. ”

“ In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirteenth. ”

“ Minor bards may work like niggers,
Framing epic rhyme or rune,
To extol the timely rigours
Of an English June;
Though its charms I well remember,
I prefer November!
Though the tourists sing together
When July is warm and bright,
While to sportsmen on the heather,
Bent on bagging fur and feather,
August brings delight;
Though September's seldom stormy,
And October, chill and dry,
Carries joy to every Dormy-
House from Wick to Rye;
Yet (since I am not a member)
I prefer November!
In the street the slime may spatter [114]
Ev'ry wretched passer-by ”

“ And green things paling in the garden there
Tell us too well that Summer is a-sleeping,
And harvest-time is on us unaware;
The early apples even now are falling,
The tassel'd corn, the fields of ripening rye,
The purpling grape—all, all are sadly calling
That Summer's glory, too, must fade and die.
But hark!—what sound is that!—it seems like thunder,
And yet 'tis but the wind, within the trees,—
The far-off wind, fresh-filled with nameless wonder,—
A prophesy of Autumn's freshening breeze.
SEPTEMBER
Come walk a mile with me—'Tis sweet September ”

“ The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there, I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ SEPTEMBER THE ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ has indeed been a close bosom friend of the maturing sun, and for the last three days before Legs went back to his crammer in town, he, Helen, and I spent a prostrated existence. Heat that in July invigorates, is utterly intolerable if it occurs at the end of September, just as the crisp winter day, which would be so welcome in January, descending to the earth as it usually does in June, produces merely amazed horror at the weather, and probably a cold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”