Along the river's summer walk
The withered tufts of asters nod,
And trembles on its arid stalk
The hoar plume of the golden-rod.
And on a ground of sombre fir
And azure-studded juniper
The silver-birch its buds of purple shows,
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild rose.
--JOHN G. WHITTIER.
The ash her purple drops forgivingly
And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea,
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze
Of bushes low, as when on cloudy days
Ere the rain falls the cautious farmer burns his brush.
--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
What School of Design can vie with the autumn colors? The leaves
are not dipped in one dye, as at the dye-house, but they are dyed
in light of various degrees of strength, and left to set and dry
there.--HENRY D. THOREAU.
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
--WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
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