Anyone who knows my wife Joan and me knows that we are seasonal opposites. She is very much summer's child, a worshiper of the sun, and a reveler in warm weather. I look forward to the autumnal equinox and the coming of cooler weather. She laments it, raging against the dying of the night. Now, she has certainly helped me to find and appreciate the joys of summer. But I'm still an autumn and winter more than a spring and summer guy.
I have always looked forward to breaking out the flannel and the sweaters. I like the shorter daylight when it means lighting candles and starting a fire in the fireplace. There's something satisfying about seeing the cornfields in harvest. And I know that for the circle of our lives to progress, the darker, dormant season is necessary. The slowing down of life just suits me. And maybe it has something to do with my being born in October.
Anyway, I thought a fitting tribute to autumn might be to share a piece from one of my favorite poets, W.B. Yeats.
"The Wild Swans at Coole" (1919)
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
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