Goodbyes

Autumn Effect at Argenteuil 1873  Claude Monet

Threnody
                  by John Farrar
The red leaves fall upon the lake,
The brown leaves drift,
The yellow leaves fly with the wind,
High and swift.

And Autumn nights bring open fires,
With roasted corn,
When silver frosted grasses greet
Early morn.

I fly my kite across the hill,
The slim string breaks,
It flashes like a cloud above
Hills and lakes.

I cannot follow, only stand
And watch it go,
Across far and lonely place
That airplanes know.

Abundant Fruit

Autumn: The Grapes from the Promised Land  Nicolas Poussin

from the Farmer's Almanac, 1818

Autumn arrives, array'd in splendid mein;
Vines, cluster'd full, add to the beauteous scene,
And fruit-trees cloth'd profusely laden, nod,
Complaint bowing to the fertile sod.

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

The Harvesters   Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Reapers in Autumn
                       by James Thomson

Soon as the morning trembles o'er the sky,
And unperceived, unfolds the spreading day;
Before the ripen'd field the reapers stand,
In fair array.

At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves;
While through their cheerful band the rural talk,
The rural scandal, and the rural jest,
Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time,
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.
Behind, the master walks, builds up the shocks:
And, conscious, glancing oft on every side
His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husbandman! but fling
From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth,
The liberal handful. Think, oh think!
How good the God of harvest is to you,
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields;
While these unhappy partners of your kind
Wide hover round you, like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole. The various turns
Of fortune ponder; that your sons may want
What now, with hard reluctance, faint, ye give.

A is for Apple

Still Life with Apples and Oranges  Paul Cezanne

After Apple Picking
                     by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.  

An Autumn Trinket or Two

Autumn Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Nature XXVII, Autumn
                      by Emily Dickinson
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

A Romp After the Harvest is In

Dance of the Majos at  the Banks of Manzanar  Francisco DeGoya

Harvest-Home 
                      Old English Song

Come, Roger and Nell,
Come, Simpkin and Bell,
Each lad with his lass hither come;
With singing and dancing,
And pleasure advancing,
To celebrate harvest-home!

Our labour is o'er,
Our barns, in full store,
Now swell with rich gifts of the land;
Let each man then take,
For the prong and the rake,
His can and his lass in his hand.

No courtier can be
So happy as we,
In innocence, pastime, and mirth;
While thus we carouse,
With our sweetheart or spouse,
And rejoice o'er the fruits of the earth.

Chorus
'Tis Ceres bids play,
And keep holiday,
To celebrate harvest-home!
Harvest-home! Harvest-home!
To celebrate harvest-home!

Some Leaves Miss the Fire

Autumn Leaves Georgia O'Keefe

Leaves  
          by Elsie N. Brady

How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.

What To Do With All Those Leaves?

Autumn Landscape 1885 Vincent Van Gogh

Autumn Fires

                by Robert Lewis Stevenson

In the other gardens

And all up the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!