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How the hills blaze!
‘Tis the blush of frost-kissed leaves,
The gold that wonderful summer days
Have stored in yellow sheaves.
But away in the shimmering air
The pageant of gold everywhere
Melts to a purple haze.
HEN THE great King Scyld had "departed to the All-Father’s keeping," his comrades, as he himself had bidden, placed him in a "ring stemmed vessel," clothed
in his most royal robes, with all his far-gathered jewels and treasure, his burnished weapons of warfare about him. On his bosom sparkled many a jewel." Above him, "high under heaven,’ floated a gold-wrought banner. Thus in royal-state the tide bore him away, while his well-loved hearth-companions stood on the shore and gazed in mournfulness,
It is in such splendor and richness that Summer slowly sails away, "trailing clouds of glory" as it departs. Never so gorgeously bedight
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as in the hour of passing, never so dear as in the days when we watch it drift from us. Other Summers will come but they may not be so fair, we think, and we shall be changed or mayhap shall have floated away in our own lonely barge to a far-off sunset bourne. So to all m e n Autumn has ever been a season that brings a mournful message, arrayed though it may be in the glory of a King.
The Old Town is surely a favorite canvas for the great colorist. All hues and tints must be used, for the trees and grasses and trailing vines are of many varieties. However tenaciously they cling to their sober midsummer dress, there comes a day when they drink of a softly fall ing Autumn rain, and shiver a little in a breeze that whispers a strange story to them. Then quickly is there a flash of color over all the scene,—scarlet and crimson, yellow and orange, wine-color and maroon, shaded browns and grays new shoots on reluctant elms add the very color of spring here is a tree whose leaves are half green, half gold, there a gray old trunk with a flame of woodbine creeping around and up to the highest twig; the grasses along the wayside are of unwonted brilliant hues, and every lone tree stands like a burning bush. Always the pines grow darker and darker as a back ground; and always the sky that arches above all,—whether blue or gray, harmonizes. A soft, shimmering veil of blue-white haze,—Nature’s inimitable fashion,—graces all. In such days you should look out over the Old Town, and away to its Sunset hills, where it may be granted to you in the evening, to see the sun sink in a sea of gold, transfiguring earth and sky with un-named brightness.
There come gray, dripping days, when the bright tints are washed from the leaves and the wind dances them away. A twilight of somber color covers all the landscape. The trees become bare, gaunt shapes, no longer a hiding place for the habitations of men. Still there is summer’s deep green on many a grassy slope. Sunny November noontides bring enchantment, and on the lawns belated butterflies flit around dandelions lured out of hiding. But be sure
that finally a warning will sweep from the north, the last fluffy dandelion will be blown, and the roysterer Winter will have his turn with the Old Town, the Hills, and the River.
The End
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© 2001, Lynn Waterman