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Entering upon the last week of August, I may call the year still
Summer,--yes, still Summer, but the Autumn days are drawing near.
“_September_”--directly I pen that word in the right-hand corner of my
letters, a great gap seems to have opened between the Summer and me.
Autumn days are here: the gladness and glee of the year have gone, and
a tender sweet sadness and mellow lucid gloom seem to have gathered
over the still calm expecting landscape. The corn is all cut and
carried, the pale stubble fields, edged with the deep green hedges,
lie a little blankly on the hill-side or in the valley; the brighter
Summer-shoots of the elms and the apple-trees have all sobered down now
into uniform darkness; the little blue harebells tremble in clusters
on the dried sunny hedge-banks; the gossamers twinkle on the grass,
late into the morning, with a thick dew that has not yet quite made up
its mind to be frost. The partridges whirr up from under your feet as
you throw your leg over that stile; the rooks wheel home much earlier
to bed. The fungus tribe begins to look up, and after a shower you
come suddenly, as you cross the meadow, upon a cluster of buff-white
mushrooms, with the delicious rose-grey under their eaves, and
gathering them for the wife at home, you wander here and there to catch
the white gleam among the grass, and are pleased, when successful, as a
child with his first Spring daisies. Quiet, tenderly-sad Autumn days,
after the harvest is gathered in and the plums are picked!
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“Autumn! Forth from glowing orchards stepped he gaily, in a gown
Of warm russet, freaked with gold, and with a visage sunny brown;
And he laughed for very joy, and he danced from too much pleasure,
And he sang old songs of harvest, and he quaffed a mighty measure.
But above this wild delight an overmastering graveness rose,
And the fields and trees seemed thoughtful in their absolute repose;
And I saw the woods consuming in a many-coloured death--
Streaks of yellow flame, down-deepening through the green
that lingereth;
Sanguine flushes, like a sunset, and austerely-shadowing brown.
And I heard within the silence the nuts sharply rattling down;
And I saw the long dark hedges all alight with scarlet fire,
Where the berries, pulpy-ripe, had spread their bird-feasts
on the briar.”
We have here, save for some little flaws, a perfect painting of the
intensely still, calm, expecting attitude of nature, the absolute
repose of the year, which rests by its work done, and asks, in a quiet
peace, in a deep trust, of the All-wise and the All-loving, “What next?”
“Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only through the faded leaf,
The chestnut pattering to the ground.”
Autumn days! I think they would be very sad indeed if we could only see
decay in them, and if God had not put a little safe bud and germ of
hope into every bulb and upon every branch--a promise of future life
amid universal death: just as He put that green promise-bud into the
heart of Adam and Eve, when such a dreadful death had gathered about
the present and the future for them--declaring, to their seemingly
victorious foe, of the woman’s seed, that
“It shall bruise thy head.”
A tiny dear little germ of a bud, and oh, how many hundred Summers and
Winters passed before it developed into the glorious perfect flower!
And so now there is yet a sadness, but only a cheery, gentle, tender
sadness, about Autumn days to the heart that is waiting for God. And
it seems to me wonderful that He should have given us one of His own
minstrels to sit on the twigs as they grow bare and lonely-looking,
and to express to us just the feeling that Autumn calls up within the
heart, and that we yearn to have set to music for us. The little Robin
waits his time; he does not cease, indeed, to trill his note in Spring,
although we do not notice him then amid our blackbirds and thrushes and
blackcaps and nightingales; for he is very humble-hearted, and content
to be set aside when we can do without him. But Autumn days come, and
the nightingale has fled, and the blackcap is far away, and the lark
and the thrush and the blackbird are silent;--then the robin draws
near. Close to our houses he comes, with his cheery warm breast, and
kind bright eye, and his message from God. And then he interprets the
Autumn to us, in those broken, tenderly-glad thrills of song, that,
simple though they be, can sometimes disturb the heart with beauty that
it cannot fathom, but that agitates and shakes it even to the sudden
brimming of the eyes with tears. “Yes, it _is_ sad,” he says, “to see
the flowers dying, and the leaves falling, and the harvest over. It
_is_ sad--not a little sad--still, cheer up, cheer up; have a good
heart. God has told me, and my little warm heart knows, that it is not
_all_ sad. I know it is not. I can’t tell why. But it can’t be all sad;
for God sent me to sing in the Autumn days. He taught me my song, and I
know that there is a great deal in it about peace and joy. And it must
be right; for though my nest is choked up, and my little ones are
flown, and my mate has left me, I can’t help singing it. Cheer up. It
is sad, but not all sad. Peace and joy--joy and peace.”
“The morning mist is cleared away,
Yet still the face of heaven is grey,
Nor yet th’ autumnal breeze has stirred the grove,
Faded, yet full, a paler green
Skirts soberly the tranquil scene,
The red-breast warbles round this leafy cove.
“Sweet messenger of ‘calm decay,’
Saluting sorrow as you may,
As one still bent to find or make the best,
In thee and in this quiet mead,
The lesson of sweet peace I read,
Rather in all to be resigned than blest.
“Oh cheerful, tender strain! the heart
That duly bears with you its part,
Singing so thankful to the dreary blast,
Though gone and spent its joyous prime,
And on the world’s Autumnal time,
’Mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast,
“That is the heart for watchman true,
_Waiting to see what God will do_.”
* * * * *
Let us walk out into the garden. I love an Autumn garden, and I think
that at any season of the year a garden is a book in which we may read
a great deal about God. On the Sunday evenings, therefore, I like to
sit there, under a tree may be, with some peaceful heavenly book,
sometimes to read, and sometimes to close over my thumb, and keep just
as company while I meditate; and God’s works seem an apt comment on
God’s Word, which I have heard or read that day.
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