Summer fallow

“ The suns of midsummer, tempered by spruce boughs, flicker and play upon a broad-backed rock where fairy pools made by the late rain in its crannies are frequented by waxwing and woodpecker, even though an intruder sleeps upon that dryad’s couch. Brakes and sweet fern crowd around it. Tasseled alders are its curtains. Here one might be forever at rest. It is to such a place that rebel wishes turn when the early grass and clover thicken in the pastures or when the summer birds begin their slow recessional. ”

“ The kindly summer that gives the flower to the bee, the sun to the flower, the blue sky to the sun, and all the earth to joy. Surely—and but a mile away Judith slept, dreaming, but not of song. And over the waters that quickened with insect life, through the air all astir with the scents and savours of spring, athwart the earth that was quivering with the growth of all things green—summer came one day nearer. ”

“ The bland zephyrs of the spring have no charms for them; but basking and careering in the sultry gleams of June and July, they associate in throngs, and, screaming, dash round the steeple or the ruined tower, to serenade their nesting mates; and glare and heat are in their train. When the fervor of summer ceases, this bird of the sun will depart. The evening robin, from the summit of some leafless bough or projecting point, tells us that autumn is come, and brings matured fruits, chilly airs, and sober hours; and he, the lonely minstrel that now sings, is understood by all. ”

“ They are really not summer things at all, but creatures of the winter—the short, brilliant day of icy keenness, and the long night of tempest, wind, and drifting snows. Then, at least, clothed so simply in their robes of jet and ermine, they stand in something of their old true majesty, solemn, forbidding, terrible. Summer, as it were, over-dresses them, with its skirts of emerald-bright meadows and fringe of purple forests, and all its flying scarves of painted air and mist. The colours are so brilliant, the skies so soft, the flowers climb so high. ”

“ However we may prefer the green and living beauty of spring, when everything is so full of vitality, so buoyant and free, yet the autumn scenery is the most magnificent of any in the year."
"Every season has its charms," said Spalding, "Even the winter, with its cold, its dead and cheerless desolation, has its robe of chaste and peerless white, which, as well as that of the spring-time, the summer, and the autumn, has been the theme of song. I agree with you, that in gorgeousness of beauty, there is no season so rich as the autumn. ”

“ The sun shines warmly without, and through the open casement beats warmly upon the floor within. The birds sing in the joyousness of full-robed summer; the drowsy hum of the bees, stealing sweets from the honeysuckle that bowers the window, lulls the air to a gentle quiet. Her breathing scarce breaks the summer stillness. Yet, she knows it is nearly over. Madge, too,—with features saddened, yet struggling against grief,—feels—that it is nearly over. ”

“ I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime. ”

“ The eyes of the earth are heavy. The air is asleep. Yet the round shadow of my oak begins to shift. The cattle do not move; the pasture still sleeps under the wide, white glare.
But already the noon is passing—to-day I see the signs of coming autumn everywhere.
Of the four seasons of the year summer is the shortest, and the one we are least acquainted with. Summer is hardly a pause between spring and autumn, simply the hour of the year’s noon.
We can be glad with the spring, sad with the autumn, eager with the winter; but it is hard for us to go softly, to pause and to be still with the summer ”

“ So they kindle and darken, until they leap from the ashes of winter a pure, thin blaze in the shadbush, to burn higher and hotter across the summer, to flicker and die away—a line of yellow embers—in the weird witch-hazel of the autumn. ”

“ With the falling leaf, the barge-like open cars close up into well-warmed saloons, and falter to hourly intervals in their course. But we are still far from the falling leaf; we are hardly come to the blushing or fading leaf. Here and there an impassioned maple confesses the autumn; the ancient Pepperrell elms fling down showers of the baronet's fairy gold in the September gusts; the sumacs and the blackberry vines are ablaze along the tumbling black stone walls; but it is still summer, it is still summer: I cannot allow otherwise! ”

“ I am writing these lines in the lamplight, with all the windows and doors open to the dark July night. The summer winds are moving in the trees. A cricket and a few small green grasshoppers are chirping in the grass; but nothing louder is near at hand. And nothing louder is far off, except the cry of the whip-poor-will in the wood road. But him you hear in the spring and autumn as well as in the summer. Ah, listen! My tree-toad in the grapevine over the bulkhead door!
This is a voice you must hear—on cloudy summer days, toward twilight, and well into the evening. ”

“ It withdraws the thoughts from the wide and joyous landscape of summer, and fixes them upon those objects which bloom and rejoice within the household. The old hearth, that has rioted the summer through with boughs and blossoms, gives up its withered tenantry. The fire-dogs gleam kindly upon the evening hours; and the blaze wakens those sweet hopes and prayers which cluster around the fireside of home.
The wantoning and the riot of the season gone are softened in memory, and supply joys to the season to come,—just as youth's audacity and pride give a glow to the recollections of our manhood. ”

“ The world looks so fresh with the first frost over it—only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die.”
“If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself,” remarked Dan, pointing, with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. “Don't stand in the grass like that, you make me shiver.”
“Oh, the sun will dry me,” she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare earth of the rose bed. “Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels like summer.” ”

“ But any day the wind might come down from the north, keen and thick and white about the summits, and leave the flowers and the cony slide covered deep beneath a drift.
Spring, summer, and autumn are all one season, all crowded together—a kind of peak piercing for a few short weeks the long, bleak, unbroken land of winter here on the roof of the world. ”

“ We can yet enjoy a broken Summer. It would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the Highland hills, sans great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. ”

“ Is not Spring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest, modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures that steal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for our similitude—a staring and striking one—to Spring. But were you to stop there, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For only ask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer. Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does not Summer love the shade? ”

“ Then, with scarcely any interval of spring to moderate the sudden extreme change, the winter becomes summer—summer, without its screen of thick leaves to shelter one from the blazing, scorching heat. Everything starts into bloom, as it were, at once ”

“ There is something very fearful in this kind of wintry feeling in a summer night. The cold, the darkness, followed by intense heat, and a pale, meteoric lightning, seemed to unite the mingled evils of the various seasons, and to trace their sad analogy to life,—whose stormy summer allows youth little to enjoy, and whose chilling winter leaves age nothing to hope. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How early in the summer, too, the prophecy of autumn comes! Earlier in some years than in others; sometimes even in the first weeks of July. There is no other feeling like what is caused by this faint, doubtful, yet real perception—if it be not rather a foreboding—of the year’s decay, so blessedly sweet and sad in the same breath. ”

“ The dews of spring fall, summer's vapours fade away, and it is the pure atmosphere of autumn which clearly reveals the distant landscape, and then finally earthly existence is swallowed in the night of winter. ”

“ Not roses redly blown,
Nor golden lilies, lighting the dusky meads,
Nor proud imperial pansies, nor queen-cups quaint and rare—
Not these alone
Make the sweet sights of summer
But the countless forest leaves, the myriad wayside weeds
And slender grasses, springing up everywhere—
These help to make the summer.
One heaven bends above;
The lowliest head ofttimes has sweetest rest;
O'er song-bird in the pine, and bee in the ivy low,
Is the same love, it is all God's summer ”

“ Other summers remind me of fields of clover, or of birch-woods, or of apple-trees and berry bushes, but that summer took its character from the climbing-roses. The bright, delicate buds, that could resist neither wind nor rain, the light, waving, pale-green shoots, the soft, bending stems, the exuberant richness of blossoms, the gaily humming hosts of insects, all follow me and rise up before me in their glory, when I think of that summer, that rosy, delicate, dainty summer. ”

“ So it was with his flowers: even in the long winter evenings they were still his companions and friends.
I have remembered, when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
How, in the shimmering noon of summer past,
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the johnswort grew.
On a January date we find him writing in his Journal: "Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What life, what society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer still at the core." ”

“ Spring comes smiling, and pours her blossoms into the lap of Summer. But the skies lower, and the rain and battering hail descend, and the virgin blossoms droop their heads and almost die. Summer again smiles and the meadows look gay ”

“ In the summer, indeed, the thick leafage lends it a transitory colour and softness, but in the depth of winter, when there is nothing to hide the nakedness of truth, when the snow lies thick upon the ground and the twined twigs and twisted trunks scarce cast a tracery of shadow under the sunless sky, the utter desolation and loneliness of the spot have a horror of their own, not to be described, but never to be forgotten. ”

“ And June had become July, and midsummer lay fast over the half-empty town.
It was a summer that broke records for heat, and those fled from it who could. But in the industrious backwaters of towns, where steady work means steady bread, it is the custom of men to take the climate as it comes to them, freezing or sweating at the weather-man's desire. ”

“ For it is one of the dangers of the retrospective habit that it incapacitates us for the realization of the present hour. Much dwelling on last year's snow will make us forget the summer flowers. Dreaming of fair faces that are gone, we will look with unseeing eyes into the fair faces that companion us still. To the Spring we say: "What of all your blossom, and all your singing! Autumn is already at your heels, like a shadow; and Winter waits for you like a marble tomb." ”

“ Summer has received its first mortal wound. But its death is more fatal than its life. The noontide heat is fierce and drinks up the moisture of the rain and the fetid dust with it. The fever-wraith rises in the damp, cool night, far out in the campagna, and steals up to the walls of the city, and over them and under them and into the houses. ”

“ But with us, hot summers are things known by tradition only (as this great winter may be) ; we generally have more moisture, especially in July, than we well know what to do with. I have known a fog for a fortnight at the summer solstice, and farmers talking in church about it when they ought to be praying. ”

“ In the summer he has perpetual daylight, and need not hurry. Besides, why should he give himself special trouble to produce an unusually large crop of flax or barley, when a single night may make his labours utterly profitless? Even in midsummer the blighting frost may fall: nature seems to take a cruel pleasure in thwarting him: he is fortunate only through chance ”

“ 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. ”

“ But we cannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn. Summer is a season come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himself like a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing, his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way to make his best friends ashamed of him—in a way absolutely disgraceful to a person of his time of life. ”

“ I resolved that I would give my summer discourse only if external nature, in her soft luxuriant beauty, looked summer-like: a sweet pervading accompaniment to my poor words, giving them a force and meaning far beyond their own. What talk concerning summer skies is like the sapphire radiance, so distant and pure, looking in through the church windows? You do not remember how blue and beautiful the sky is, unless when you are looking at it: nature is better than our remembrance of her. ”