Quotes
Quotes about Autumn
When autumn scatters his departing gleams, Warn'd of approaching winter, gather'd, play The swallow-people; and toss'd wide around, O'er the calm sky, in convolution swift, The feather'd eddy floats; rejoicing once, Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire. -- Seasons--Autumn (l. 836)
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. -- Esther [1884] (ch. 1)
Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt. -- Autumnal Sonnet.
Autumn's the mellow time. -- The Winter Pear.
Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, And night by night the monitory blast Wails in the key-hole, telling how it pass'd O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes, Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods Than any joy indulgent Summer dealt. -- Day and Night Songs--Autumnal Sonnet
A maiden born when Autumn leaves Are rustling in September's breeze, A Sapphire on her brow should bind, 'Twill cure diseases of the mind. -- September, in "Notes and Queries", May 11, 1889, p. 371
O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest rest And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe, And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers. -- To Autumn (st. 1)
Gather leaves and grasses,
Love, to-day;
For the Autumn passes
Soon away.
Chilling winds are blowing.
It will soon be snowing. -- Gather Leaves and Grasses.
Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God--the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures; I trust in my own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward, Nature's good And God's. -- A Soul's Tragedy (act I)
Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay. -- Paracelsus (sc. 1)
I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,--the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,--Nature's good
And God's. -- A Soul's Tragedy. Act. i.
Thou blossom! bright with autumn dew, And colour's with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. -- To the Fringed Gentian
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen. -- Third of November
The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the first from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen. -- Death of the Flowers
All-cheering Plenty, with her flowing horn, Led yellow Autumn, wreath'd with nodding corn. -- Brigs of Ayr (l. 221)
The mellow autumn came, and with it came The promised party, to enjoy its sweets. The corn is cut, the manor full of game; The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats In russet jacket;--lynx-like is his aim; Full grows his bag, and wonderful his feats. An, nutbrown partridges! An, brilliant pheasants! And ah, ye poachers!--'Tis no sport for peasants. -- Don Juan (canto XIII, st. 75)
Wild oats make a bad autumn crop.
Yellow, mellow, ripened days, Sheltered in a golden coating; O'er the dreamy, listless haze, White and dainty cloudlets floating; Winking at the blushing trees, And the sombre, furrowed fallow; Smiling at the airy ease, Of the southward flying swallow Sweet and smiling are thy ways, Beauteous, golden Autumn days. -- Autumn Days
Autumn Into earth's lap does throw Brown apples gay in a game of play, As the equinoctials blow. -- October
Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall,-- So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move. -- Immutable
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face; Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape; This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape. -- Elegy IX--The Autumnal
Listen to the Water-Mill: Through the live-long day How the clicking of its wheel Wears the hours away! Languidly the Autumn wind Stirs the forest leaves, From the field the reapers sing Binding up their sheaves: And a proverb haunts my mind As a spell is cast, "The mill cannot grind With the water that is past." -- Lesson of the Water-Mill
Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellow'd long,--
Even wonder'd at, because he dropp'd no sooner.
Fate seem'd to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more;
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still. -- Œdipus. Act iv. Sc. 1.
What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. -- Adam Bede
If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, tho it be in the woods. And if a man knows the law, people will find it out, tho he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the prisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint landscape, and convey into oils and ochers all the enchantments of spring or autumn; or can liberate or intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses, 'tis certain that the secret can not be kept: the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his door. -- Works (vol. VIII), in his "Journal" (1855) p, 528 (ed. 1912)
Third act of the eternal play! In poster-like emblazonries "Autumn once more begins today"-- 'Tis written all across the trees In yellow like Chinese. -- The Eternal Play
Down comes rain drop, bubble follows; On the house-top one by one Flock the synagogue of swallows, Met to vote that autumn's gone. -- Life, a Bubble--A Bird's-Eye View Thereof
The Autumn wood the aster knows, The empty nest, the wind that grieves, The sunlight breaking thro' the shade, The squirrel chattering overhead, The timid rabbits lighter tread Among the rustling leaves. -- Asters
The Autumn is old; The sere leaves are flying; He hath gather'd up gold, And now he is dying;-- Old age, begin sighing! -- Autumn
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;-- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn. -- Ode--Autumn
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence. -- Ode. Autumn.
How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled! -- Written in a Volume of Shakespeare
Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
The windy lights of Autumn flare;
I watch the moonlit sails go by;
I marvel how men toil and fare,
The weary business that they play!
Their voyaging is vanity,
And fairy gold is all their gain,
And all the winds of winter cry,
"My Love returns no more again." -- Ballade of Autumn.
Sweet April! many a thought Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed; Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought, Life's golden fruit is shed. -- An April Day (st. 8)
It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves. -- Pegasus in Pound
What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair! -- An Indian Summer Reverie
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd imbower. -- Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 302.
Every season hath its pleasure; Spring may boast her flowery prime, Yet the vineyard's ruby treasuries Brighten Autumn's sob'rer time. -- Spring and Autumn
Yet could I these two days have spent,
While still the autumn sweetly shone,
Ah, me! I might have died content
When I had looked on Carcassonne. -- Carcassonne. Translated by John Reuben Thompson. Stanza 2.
Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.
Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring, Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing, Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove, Say, is not absence death to those who love? -- Pastorals--Autumn (l. 27)
Thick as autumnal leaves or driving sand. -- The Iliad of Homer. Book ii. Line 970.
I feel an autumnal Saturday, no matter how beautiful, is wasted if it doesn't find me sitting in on a football game.
For his bounty,
There was no winter in 't; an autumn 't was
That grew the more by reaping. -- Antony and Cleopatra. Act v. Sc. 2.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies; The dew dries up; the star is shot; The flight is past--and man forgot. -- Medical Essays (300)
The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps--does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning. -- Gitanjali (61)
Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more. -- The Princess. Part iv. Line 21.
Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain. -- The Seasons. Autumn. Line 2.
Thanksgiving (U.S.) Lord, I am glad for the great gift of living, Glad for Thy days of sun and of rain; Grateful for joy, with an endless thanksgiving, Grateful for laughter—and grateful for pain. Lord, I am glad for the young April's wonder, Glad for the fulness of long summer days; And now when the spring and my heart are asunder, Lord, I give thanks for the dark autumn ways. Sun, bloom, and blossom, O Lord, I remember, The dream of the spring and its joy I recall; But now in the silence and pain of November, Lord, I give thanks to Thee, Giver of all!
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps. Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine. Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush. -- The Chapel of the Hermits.
The Autumn seems to cry for thee,
Best lover of the Autumn-days! -- Helen.
This flower that first appeared as summer's guest Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves. -- Love Lies Bleeding
Art thou the bird whom Man loves best, The pious bird with the scarlet breast, Our little English Robin; The bird that comes about our doors When autumn winds are sobbing? -- The Redbreast Chasing the Butterfly
Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon, summer with the breeze, winter with snow. When idle concerns don't fill your thoughts, that's your best season.
Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon, summer with the breeze, winter with snow. When idle concerns don't fill your thoughts, that's your best season.
