SEPTEMBER
"The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."
- John Updike, September
"But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head ... The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on."
- Robert Finch
"'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone."
- Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer, 1830
Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
- William Wordsworth, September
On the Autumnal Equinox, around September 21st, in Sacramento, California, Northern Hemisphere, Earth,
we have around 12 Hours of Daylight and 12 Hours of Nighttime.
"Smoke hangs like haze over harvested fields,
The gold of stubble, the brown of turned earth
And you walk under the red light of fall
The scent of fallen apples, the dust of threshed grain
The sharp, gentle chill of fall.
Here as we move into the shadows of autumn
The night that brings the morning of spring
Come to us, Lord of Harvest
Teach us to be thankful for the gifts you bring us ..."
"Alas, that my heart is a lute,
Whereon you have learned to play!
For a many years it was mute,
Until one summer's day
You took it, and touched it, and made it thrill,
And it thrills and throbs, and quivers still!"
- Anne Barnard, My Heart is a Lute, 1815
"Sorrow and scarlet leaf,
Sad thoughts and sunny weather.
Ah me, this glory and this grief
Agree not well together!"
- Thomas Parsons, 1880, A Song For September
"Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds."
- Carl von Linnaeus
"Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow--follow, oh-oh."
- Try to Remember, Lyrics by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt
"Shine on, shine on harvest moon
Up in the sky,
I ain't had no lovin'
Since January, February, June or July
Sno Time ain't no time to stay
Outdoors and spoon,
So shine one, shine on harvest noon
For me and my gal."
- By Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, 1903
"September twenty-second, Sir, the bough cracks with unpicked apples,
and at dawn the small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn."
- Robert Lowell
"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always
been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
- Henry James
"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil.
And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November."
- Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905
"By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer."
- Helen Hunt Jackson, September, 1830-1885
"Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies?"
- Gerard Manly Hopkins, Hurrahing in Harvest, 1918
"The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf
shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Crown'd with the sickle, and the sheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on."
- James Thomson, Autumn, 1730
School,
Effort, and
Play.
Trying your best
Each hour of the day,
Making new friends,
Being good as you can
Exciting discoveries,
Reading books with a friend."
- Boni Fulgham
"Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers."
- Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon
"September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret."
- Alexander Theroux, 1981
"Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness."
- Emily Dickinson
"the air is different today
the wind sings with a new tone
sighing of changes
coming
the harvest gathered
a flower, a nut
some mead, and bread
a candle and a prayer
returning the fruits
in thanksgiving
to the grove
and receiving
it's blessing
again"
- Rhawk, Alban Elfed
"Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit,
and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day."
- John Donne, 1620
"Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas."
- Edward Dowden, In September
" 'I grow old, I grow old,' the garden says. It is nearly October. The bean leaves grow paler, now lime, no yellow, no leprous, dissolving before my eyes. The pods curl and do not grow, turn limp and blacken. The potato vines wither and the tubers huddle underground in their rough weather-proof jackets, waiting to be dug. The last tomatoes ripen and split on the vine; it takes days for them to turn fully now, and a few of the green ones are beginning to fall off."
- Robert Finch
"For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go."
- George Washington Cable
"The goldenrod is yellow
The corn is turning brown
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down."
- Childrens song
"Indian summer—
the old cat shares
her corner of the deck"
- James Chessing
"There comes a time when autumn asks,
"What have you been doing all summer?"
"Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away
Our hearts were ringing
In the key that our souls were singing.
As we danced in the night,
Remember how the stars stole the night away."
- September, Lyrics by Maurice White, Charles Stemney and Verdine White
"All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power."
- Dante Alighieri
