SUMMER PAUSES
[Illustration]
Where the slow creek is putting out to sea, freighted with seed and wan
leaf, cardinal-flowers watch the waters reddened by their image. Old
gold and ocher, the ferns beneath move listlessly up and down with the
ripple. As spring walks first along the stream, autumn, too, comes early
to the waterside, to kindle swamp maples and give the alder colors of
onyx. The lustrous indigo of the silky cornel hangs there in profusion.
Scented white balls of the river bush have lost their golden haloes, and
even the red-grounded purple of the ironweed is turning umber. The
fruited sweetbrier shows rust. Fall's ancient tapestry, the browns of
decay worked over with carmine, olive, maroon, and buff, is being hung,
but where the blue lobelia is clustered in the lowground summer pauses.
A parting sun catches the clear yellow of curtsying, transfigured birch
leaves, and looks back, waiting, to give September's landscape a
hesitant farewell. It seems early to go. Pickerelweed is azure still.
Among the green bogs the fragrant lady's-tresses wear the white timidity
of April, and the three petals of the enameled arrowhead flower are
dusty with gold. But seeds wrapped up in brown are scattering.
Remembrance yields to prophecy.
The harvesters of grain and grass have gone, and the tinted stubble is
full of crickets and monotonous cicadas. Now the crumbling furrow is
folded back behind the plow and corn knives are swinging close to the
solemn pumpkins, for in cornfield, vineyard, and orchard and in the
squirrel's domain the last harvests of all are hastening to ripeness as
the sunset chill gives warning of a disaster foretold since August by
the katydid. The honey-colored pippins, cracked and mellow in the
brooding heat, encounter the windfalls of October's trees--deepening red,
soft yellow, and polished green. Great, sheltering leaves are dropping
from the burdened vine. Every breath tells of fruits, drying herbs, and
the late flowers that in deserted gardens are most pungent in
September--marigolds, tansy, and the cinnamon pink. Pennyroyal and mint
are betrayed. Thorn apples, not near ripened, are knocked from the twig
by south-bound birds.
Still, among wine-colored and vermilion foliage, the acorn is green,
though flushed wintergreen berry and red-gemmed partridge vine proclaim
autumn along the forest floor. The auburn splendors are upon the sumac
and the burning-bush of old-fashioned dooryards, where, too, the smoke
tree holds its haze of seeds. Sometimes a gentian stands erect among
dead grasses--a slim señora with a fringed mantilla swirled close about
her shoulders in the chilly dusk. The closed gentian keeps its darkly
impenetrable blue beside the pink-tipped companion stalks of the
snake's-head. Fair are the sheathed berries of the prickly ash--but
daggers to the taste. Often they grow among wild cherries, which,
juiceless now, are sweet as dried fruits from Persia. And there are the
black nannyberries with their watermelon flavor, and the first spicy
wild grapes.
Immortelles are bleached paper white on sandy hills. The nightshade
holds berries of three colors, passing from brilliant green to clouded
amber and deep crimson lake, and still upon it hangs the mysterious blue
blossom, shunned. Dogwood boughs are gorgeous as a sunset, and the thick
scarlet clusters droop from the mountain ash. The last humming birds
haunt tanned honeysuckles. Languid, but clinging yet to the sun world,
the yellow lily dies on weedy streams. If the all-conquering goldenrod
hangs the way for summer's passing with the color of regret, it has made
every meadow El Dorado with its plumes, sprays, clumps, and spears.
Spray upon delicate spray, the fairy lavender aster has taken possession
of the roadsides and fields, and before it, far into the shade, goes the
white wood aster, mingling with the flamboyant leaves of dwarf oaks and
the glistening red seeds of the wild turnip. To make September's pageant
the scented, pale petals of spring, the drowsy contentedness of summer's
fulfillment and the Tyrian dyes of fall are joined.
The pallid clematis, in flower along rail fences, still hides the
blacksnake, chipmunk, and red squirrel--sometimes even the unsylphlike
woodchuck--but the marshes and the branches of the lakeside pines have
felt for days past the brief touch of many a strange bird's feet as the
vanguard migrants seek regions of longer days. Finely dressed visitors
have come to the blue-berried juniper and the monstrous pokeweed of the
terra-cotta stem. The heron breaks his profound meditation to engulf a
meadow frog, for he will not leave until the wild geese "with mingled
sound of horn and bells" press south above the watercourses. Starling
and blue jay stay awhile to oblige with their clatter to the dawn. The
fur has thickened on the woods creatures.
The blind might hear September in the uproarious arguments of the crow,
the despondent cries of katydid, tree toad, and hoot owl. In the air is
reluctance, pause. Flaming festoons of woodbine and poison ivy begarland
the stone wall. Summer cannot wait. Elegiac purples of the aster beckon,
and the butterfly sleeps long upon the thistle, but she would not go
now, in the month of the first bittersweet and the last sweet pea.