Autumn Sunshine Quotes

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house." [Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]

October's Party October gave a party; The leaves by hundreds came - The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples, And leaves of every name. The Sunshine spread a carpet, And everything was grand, Miss Weather led the dancing, Professor Wind the band.

You are my heart, my soul, my equal. You see the light in me when I’m lost within darkness. When I’m cold and distant, you’re as warm as autumn sunshine, bathing me in your glow. If I am the night, then you are the stars lighting up my endless dark.” His voice broke, wrenching my heart. “My best friend, the absolute love of my life, now until forevermore, I call you my wife.

She seemed a compound of the autumn leaves and the winter sunshine ...

In the autumn of your years don't make it so that what you look back on is regret. Live your life now so that whatever you do gives some sunshine before you head into the winter of your life.

You are my heart, my soul, my equal. You see the light in me when I’m lost within darkness. When I’m cold and distant, you’re as warm as autumn sunshine, bathing me in your glow.

November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!

You don't waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow.

It’s the kind of music you want to listen to while you lay on the grass and get lost in the sky. It feels like sunshine breaking on your skin.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail.

Ease your whiskers, rest your paws, Pies and puddings fill the stores Sweetly dream the night away Till sunshine brings another day

Life is incomplete without understanding the language of the beauty of the flowers, rocks, fine mountain lines, autumn leaves, clouds, stars and galaxies in the deep sky, music of the early birds, sunshine into the trees, and movements of the butterflies. The extravaganza of nature ignites the light that you have inside.

After 50 years together as a couple: "Look how fast the leaves are falling now," Alan says. "The trees will be bare in a couple of days. Do you realize that we have watched the leaves fall together for more than fifty autumns?" I stand quietly, looking at Alan, letting his words sink in. I am suddenly so moved.

The Sun Going South In late sunshine I wander troubled. Restless I wander in autumn sunlight. Too many changes, partings, and deaths. Doors have closed that were always open. Trees that held the sky up are cut down. So much that I alone remember! This creek runs dry among its stones. Souls of the dead, come drink this water! Come into this side valley with me, a restless old woman, unseemly, troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones.

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in open air.

Sure, Manda knew that the tree wasn’t actually dead. Mrs. Evans, her teacher, taught her that some trees lose their leaves in the wintertime making them look dead, when they were only sleeping. Sleeping or not, the big tree was dead to Manda.

It was an unusual sunset. Having sat behind opaque drapery all day, I had not realized that a storm was pushing in and that much of the sky was the precise shade of old suits of armor one finds in museums. At the same time, patches of brilliance engaged in a territorial dispute with the oncoming onyx of the storm. Light and darkness mingled in strange ways both above and below. Shadows and sunshine washed together, streaking the landscape with an unearthly study of glare and gloom. Bright clouds and black folded into each other in a no-man's land of the sky. The autumn trees took on the appearance of sculptures formed in a dream, their leaden-colored trunks and branches and iron-red leaves all locked in an infinite and unliving moment, unnaturally timeless. The gray lake slowly tossed and tumbled in a dead sleep, nudging unconsciously against its breakwall of numb stone. A scene of contradiction and ambivalence, a tragicomedic haze over all. A land of perfect twilight.

They had expected to see the grey, heathery slope of the moor going up and up to join the dull autumn sky. Instead, a blaze of sunshine met them. It poured through the doorway as the light of a June day pours into a garage when you open the door. It made the drops of water on the grass glitter like beads and showed up the dirtiness of Jill's tear-stained face. And the sunlight was coming from what certainly did look like a different world- what they could see it. They saw smooth turf, smoother and brighter than Jill had ever seen before, and blue sky and, darting to and fro, things so bright that they might have been jewels or huge butterflies.

What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by--huge marigolds, double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is autumnal, and therefore cannot last.

I dream of dreams— Once dreamt, now lost. How sunshine steals from autumn frost.

on an autumn day of showery fitful sunshine, fine rain floating in the gleams like dust motes, clouds liquid with light, thick cobwebs in the hedge glittering with raindrops.

When iridescent summer nights fade into sullen autumn gray, as the world marches grimly towards the slow, cold death of winter, something changes. Dark spirits strengthen, emboldened by lengthening shadows and huddled masses. The sunshine of youth once kept these phantoms at bay, but the doors to my soul creak slowly open with the passing years, the seams of a skeptical mind loosen as the autumn of life approaches.

Lessons can be learned from past pandemics. In 1918, as Boston hospitals filled beyond capacity, a tent hospital was set up in nearby Brookline. Though exposing ailing patients to the chilly Boston autumn was condemned by Bostonians as “barbarous and cruel,” it turned out that the fresh breeze and sunshine seemed to afford the overflow patients far better odds of survival than those inside the overcrowded, poorly ventilated hospitals.2039

They all gave place when the signing was done, and Little Dorrit and her husband walked out of the church alone. They paused for a moment on the steps of the portico, looking at the fresh perspective of the street in the autumn morning sun’s bright rays, and then went down. Went down into a modest life of usefulness and happiness. Went down to give a mother’s care, in the fulness of time, to Fanny’s neglected children no less than to their own, and to leave that lady going into Society forever and a day. Went down to give a tender nurse and friend to Tip for some few years, who was never vexed by the great exactions he made of her in return for the riches he might have given her if he had ever had them, and who lovingly closed his eyes upon the Marshalsea and all its blighted fruits. They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar.

The soft autumn sunshine of hazy gold lay on the streets, but there was a nip, a sharpness in the air that put an electric sparkle into everything. The solid world was really lighter than it looked. There was a covert brilliance ready to dart forth into swift-rushing flame. He felt the throbbing sheen and rustle on the golden light, and his heart sang with joy above the heavy streets and pavements. He was aware of a point of view that almost denied weight to inert matter, making the dead mass of the universe alive and dancing. The nip and sparkle in the air interpenetrated all these fixed and heavy things, these laborious structures, these rigid forms, dissolving them into flowing, everychanging patterns of fluid loveliness. He saw them again as powder, the parks and roads blown everywhere, the pavements lifted, the wall wide open to the sky. The solid earth became transparent, flooded with light and air. It seemed etherialized. It spread great golden wings towards the blazing sun and limitless sky. Air knew no fixed and rigid forms. Societies, of course, were only cages. He saw the huge cage of the earth blow open. Humanity flew out at last…

Each of us has his own way of classifying humanity. To me, as a child, men and women fell naturally into two great divisions: those who had gardens and those who had only houses. Brick walls and pavements hemmed me in and robbed me of one of my birthrights; and to the fancy of childhood a garden was a paradise, and the people who had gardens were happy Adams and Eves walking in a golden mist of sunshine and showers, with green leaves and blue sky overhead, and blossoms springing at their feet; while those others, dispossessed of life's springs, summers, and autumns, appeared darkly entombed in shops and parlors where the year might as well have been a perpetual winter.

Instead I turned my attention back to the copper of peach jam, releasing its autumnal scent. Peach is perhaps the most perfect fruit for making jam: sweet, yet firm; the golden flesh turning to a darker burnt-orange with cooking. My method allows the pieces of fruit to stay intact during the process, while retaining all the flavor. Today, we will leave the sugar and peach mixture to steep under a sheet of muslin; tomorrow, we will cook it, then ladle it into clean glass jars to put away for the winter. There's something very comforting about the ritual of jam-making. It speaks of cellars filled with preserves; of neat rows of jars on pantry shelves. It speaks of winter mornings and bowls of chocolat au lait, with thick slices of good fresh bread and last year's peach jam, like a promise of sunshine at the darkest point of the year. It speaks of four stone walls, a roof, and of seasons that turn in the same place, in the same way, year after year, with sweet familiarity. It is the taste of home.

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin.” “As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed, long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below.

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin. As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed,long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below.

A boat beneath a sunny sky, Lingering onward dreamily In an evening of July – Children three that nestle near, Eager eye and willing ear, Pleased a simple tale to hear – Long has paled that sunny sky: Echoes fade and memories die: Autumn frosts have slain July. As a child, I don’t understand exactly what it is about. I can’t read the significance of Alice reaching the final square and becoming a queen. But I feel the sadness in the poem, and, in this later now, I know why. It’s because everything is in the present tense, even though it cannot all be; either some of it has passed, or some of it hasn’t happened yet. The sky is sunny, but it has paled. The boat is lingering, but it is gone. It’s July, but it’s autumn. This is a riddle, a paradox. Lewis Carroll must be either looking back into the past, feeling the sunshine and the drifting boat as if he were still there . . . or looking forward from the present, imagining a time when the sky and the boat and the summer will have vanished. Which is it? Doesn’t matter. Wherever he stands, he feels both at once. The current, the retrospective, the projected, all are written in the present tense because they are all, always, mixed up together. Because, even as something is happening, it is gone. Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? Where is the boat? Where is the summer? Where are the children?

•​Offering gratitude •​Recording and tending to dreams •​Fresh air and sunshine •​Smiling at a stranger •​Gardening •​Beauty, flowers, color, trees •​Sitting near a body of water, or immersing yourself in one •​Walking and talking with a close friend •​Taking the long way home •​Meandering •​Encountering a wild animal •​Pets •​Reading a poem, and writing one •​Drawing, painting, writing, dancing, singing, chanting •​Being in nature •​Autumn colors, snowfall, spring buds •​Walking in the rain •​Talking to the moon •​Looking at the stars •​Listening to crickets •​Candlelight •​Baths •​Stillness, silence, and solitude •​Doing less and being more •​Being in silence •​Meaningful rituals

He helped me clean out my head in time for floweret sunshine, while I raked dead leaves from underneath the bed of my nails that were waiting to be organized in diaries. As the 'Forbidding Numb' piled up, he laundered my abandoned hope clean. All that I could smell on my hands were the roots of the root words I had diluted with extra letters and slushiness. There isn't a corner that we missed; and, in no time at all, I will forget the wretchedness of this winter. Soon, I will only smell peonies and calla lilies, fresh cotton sheets, and maybe—just maybe— the paperless books that I have written being pressed like petals; yet, no longer incinerators burning perished wood that already pushed up daisies right when autumn left its leaves behind me.

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,–if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn's hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known? The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows,–such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.

The tunnel of winter had settled over our lives, ushered in by that great official Hoodwink, the end of daylight saving time. Personally I would vote for one more hour of light on winter evenings instead of the sudden, extra-early blackout. Whose idea was it to jilt us this way, leaving us in cold November with our unsaved remnants of daylight petering out before the workday ends? In my childhood, as early as that, I remember observing the same despair every autumn: the feeling that sunshine, summertime, and probably life itself had passed me by before I'd even finished a halfway decent tree fort. But mine is not to question those who command the springing forward and the falling back. I only vow each winter to try harder to live like a potato, with its tacit understanding that time is time, no matter what any clock might say. I get through the hibernation months by hovering as close as possible to the woodstove without actual self-immolation, and catching up on my reading, cheered at regular intervals by the excess of holidays that collect in a festive logjam at the outflow end of our calendar.

From all enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets’ sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad hills of thyme and freedom thrice a hundred years repeated. “A hundred years of cowslips, bluebells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn; sunshine, shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the rhythm of time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power of writing; who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a century ago? The swallows to the house-tops three hundred — times think of that! Thence she sprang, and the world yearns toward her beauty as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is centuries old. That is why passion is almost sad.

Although leaves remained on the beeches and the sunshine was warm, there was a sense of growing emptiness over the wide space of the down. The flowers were sparser. Here and there a yellow tormentil showed in the grass, a late harebell or a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal. But most of the plants still to be seen were in seed. Along the edge of the wood a sheet of wild clematis showed like a patch of smoke, all its sweet-smelling flowers turned to old man's beard. The songs of the insects were fewer and intermittent. Great stretches of the long grass, once the teeming jungle of summer, were almost deserted, with only a hurrying beetle or a torpid spider left out of all the myriads of August. The gnats still danced in the bright air, but the swifts that had swooped for them were gone and instead of their screaming cries in the sky, the twittering of a robin sounded from the top of a spindle tree. The fields below the hill were all cleared. One had already been plowed and the polished edges of the furrows caught the light with a dull glint, conspicuous from the ridge above. The sky, too, was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare, the sun slipped sooner to the west and, once there, foretold a touch of frost, sinking slow and big and drowsy, crimson as the rose hips that covered the briar. As the wind freshened from the south, the red and yellow beech leaves rasped together with a brittle sound, harsher than the fluid rustle of earlier days. It was a time of quiet departures, of the sifting away of all that was not staunch against winter.

Mr Casaubon’s behaviour about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr Brooke, and the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along, shortening the weeks of courtship. The betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. On a grey but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her uncle and Celia. Mr Casaubon’s home was the manor-house. Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little church, with the old parsonage opposite. In the beginning of his career, Mr Casaubon had only held the living, but the death of his brother had put him in possession of the manor also. It had a small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the south-west front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun. This was the happy side of the house, for the south and east looked rather melancholy even under the brightest morning. The grounds here were more confined, the flower-beds showed no very careful tendance, and large clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten yards from the windows. The building, of greenish stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melancholy-looking: the sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open windows, and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into relief by that background. ‘Oh dear!’ Celia said to herself, ‘I am sure Freshitt Hall would have been pleasanter than this.’ She thought of the white freestone, the pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rosebush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately-odorous petals—Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and weather-worn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr Casaubon’s bias had been different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.

There is nothing so precious as autumn sunshine.

Do you remember the fifth chapter of "Home and the World?" 5 I'll copy a few sentences: Why can't I sing? The faraway river glitters in the light; the leaves glisten; the morning light spills over the earth like the love of the blue heavens and in this autumn symphony I alone remain silent. The sunshine of the world hits my heart with its rays, but it does not hurl them back: August is here. The sky sobs wildly. And streams of tears crash on the earth and, oh, my house is empty."6

Where were you on the night of March 7?" Typical detective stuff you hear on television all the time. It's so phony. I hate it. Most people can't remember where they were three nights ago much less on a particular date. I know I can't. The times you remember are the ones you're supposed to: Christmas Day, the Fourth of July, your birthday. As you get older and occasionally look back, even those days drift together into one small blob of memories. But you always remember the first time and the last. You remember your first day of school and the last. You remember the first time you went to the show by yourself and the last time you saw your grandfather. The first time you made love. Most of the nights of my life have passed by barely noticed, like the black squares of rosary beads slipping through the wrinkled fingers in the last pew. But later, when I've looked back, I've realized that a few ink colored seeds have taken root in my mind and have grown into oaken strength. My dreams drift back and nestle in their branches. If those nights were suddenly not to be, I, who had come to lean on them, to relish those few surviving leaves of a young autumn that has passed and will not come again, would not know where I'd been. And I'd wonder, even more so, if there was anywhere to go. Every Chicago winter delivers four gray weeks, with rare spots of sunshine that are apparently the flipside of hell. Teeth bared, the wind comes snarling off the lake with every intention of shredding the skin off your face. Numb since November, hands can no longer tell or care if they are wearing gloves. Snowmen, offsprings of childhood enthusiasm, are rarely born during these weeks. Along with the human spirit, the temperature continues to plummet. The ground is smothered by aging layers of ice and snow. Looking at a magazine ad, you see a vaguely familiar blanket of green. Squinting back through months of brown snow, salt-marked shoes, running noses, icy railings, slippery sidewalks, and smoking sewers, you try to recall the feeling of grass. February is four weeks of hanging onto the ropes, waiting to be saved from a knockout by the bell of spring. One year, I was invited to Engrim University's President's Ball, which was to be held on the first Saturday in February. I don't know why I was invited. Most of the students who received invitations were involved in a number of extracurricular activities; they participated in student government, belonged to various clubs, were presidents of fraternities or sororities, were doing extremely well academically or were, in some other way, pleasing the gods. I was never late with my tuition payments. Maybe that was it. Regardless, the President's Ball was to be held in the main ballroom of one of Chicago's swankiest hotels. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to impress Sarah with my importance. A light snowfall was dotting the night air when

reserved spot near the door to the Medical Arts building when he saw Annie dash down the steps. Her hair was loose, a long tangle of waves and curls that glinted gold and red in the fierce autumn sunshine. The look on her face – Jesus, he could live to be two hundred and never forget the look on her face as she darted past him. She glowed from within. There was no other way to say it. She had always been beautiful to him but

The sunshine is so healthful,” the lady said. “Isn’t it wonderful how the good God has arranged nature for our benefit. In summer we can come to the sea for a cool swim, in spring we can enjoy the fresh green grass and flowers, in autumn the rain makes music for us, and in winter He sends the snow. He has made all things in wisdom.

Sweetly the summer air came up to the tumulus, the grass sighed softly, the butterflies went by, sometimes alighting on the green dome. Two thousand years! Summer after summer the blue butterflies had visited the mound, the thyme had flowered, the wind sighed in the grass. The azure morning had spread its arms over the low tomb; and full glowing noon burned on it; the purple of sunset rosied the sward. Stars, ruddy in the vapour of the southern horizon, beamed at midnight through the mystic summer night, which is dusky and yet full of light. White mists swept up and hid it; dews rested on the turf; tender harebells drooped; the wings of the finches fanned the air—finches whose colours faded from the wings how many centuries ago! Brown autumn dwelt in the woods beneath; the rime of winter whitened the beech clump on the ridge; again the buds came on the wind-blown hawthorn bushes, and in the evening the broad constellation of Orion covered the east. Two thousand times! Two thousand times the woods grew green, and ring-doves built their nests. Day and night for two thousand years—light and shadow sweeping over the mound—two thousand years of labour by day and slumber by night. Mystery gleaming in the stars, pouring down in the sunshine, speaking in the night, the wonder of the sun and of far space, for twenty centuries round about this low and green-grown dome. Yet all that mystery and wonder is as nothing to the Thought that lies therein, to the spirit that I feel so close.

Fall. Rain. Wind. Depressing! And it was only going to get worse. Chilly, overcast weather was forecast for the rest of November. Then again, October had been beautiful. The autumn leaves glowing red, yellow, and orange; glorious sunshine; blue skies; and a wonderful crispness in the air. But unfortunately those days were gone. It was the first week in November; dead leaves swirled around in the wind, rain clouds hung low over Gothenburg, and the contours of the city dissolved in the damp mist.

I, inside you! ( Part 1 ) It was quite and still, Though she lay beside me, The room did with a sense of coziness fill, As I looked at her and she looked at me, Even the winking of the eyes had ceased, For it disturbed the rhyme of our feelings, Love in our life had doubtlessly increased, Inspite of times passing moments and their wanton stealings, So, she did not wink and neither did I, We lay there still, covered in the morning light, I was glad that finally I could say, it was I who she loved, just I, Not winking, hearts throbbing, in that embrace tight, The warm sunbeams pierced through the curtain, And lit the corners and walls of the room, It was love, it was eternity, it was everything, it was romantic, of it I was now certain, And then like a bright Summer rose her body and her feelings over mine did bloom, I did not want to wink anymore, Because I did not want to miss her beauty even for a split second, She loved me, I loved her, she kissed me, I kissed her just like always and before, She was silent, she was passionate, she was a beautiful woman in love with nothing to pretend, And with every new beam of light invading the room, She held me tighter and drew me closer, It felt like Summer beauty was the bride and I was its sole groom, And how loved I felt being with her, Almost like the Autumn mist that spreads itself around everything, She grew over me, Till in this state of eternal everything I felt like nothing, And it did not matter as long as she was kissing me, Time was waiting at the door, The destiny was knocking on the sunshine kissed walls, Cupid was busy shooting arrows of absolute amour, But now we were nowhere, because like the sunshine we hung everywhere in the room made of love walls,

While autumn days are for romping outside in the brilliant sunshine, autumn nights are for curling up in the comfort of one’s own home.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

When the time comes, fight with all your heart. We’re warriors, Hadjar. We don’t stay at home and wait for our wife to milk the goats and cook us dinner. No, our dinner is the enemy’s flesh and blood. We don’t die in our beds, surrounded by our children and their children. No, we die in our own shit, on the battlefield, amongst the stench and corpses of our comrades. We don’t sow, we don’t plow, we don’t write poetry, we don’t sing ballads. We fight, Hadjar. We fight so that others can caress their tired spouses, hold their grandchildren, paint great works of art, and write songs. Preferably about us. We’re warriors, Hadjar. Our hands are covered in the blood of our friends and enemies alike. But that doesn’t mean that we have to suffer for it. And that’s why I’m telling you to enjoy your life. What is your life, disciple? What is the life of a warrior?” He gripped the Black Blade. The answer was simple: a warrior’s life was their sword. The only thing that stayed with them until their death. Hadjar opened his eyes. He looked at the world around him as if he were seeing it for the first time. His heart was still beating, pumping blood through his veins. If his heart was still beating, his sword wasn’t broken. His sword was his heart. Every wind current that was one with him was his sword. Every rustle of the autumn leaves that was one with him was his sword. Every ray of sunshine, every unshed tear, every musical note, every speck of dust, every stone… was his sword. The world was one with him, and therefore, with his sword as well. But if the world and Hadjar were one with his sword, then who wielded the blade? The same person who controlled his life — Hadjar. Tarisfal Orune, the greatest swordsman in the history of Darnassus, hadn’t committed suicide, but had instead taught his disciple his last and most important lesson: Hadjar ruled his life and his sword. And his sword ruled the world around him.

Hadjar opened his eyes. He looked at the world around him as if he were seeing it for the first time. His heart was still beating, pumping blood through his veins. If his heart was still beating, his sword wasn’t broken. His sword was his heart. Every wind current that was one with him was his sword. Every rustle of the autumn leaves that was one with him was his sword. Every ray of sunshine, every unshed tear, every musical note, every speck of dust, every stone… was his sword. The world was one with him, and therefore, with his sword as well. But if the world and Hadjar were one with his sword, then who wielded the blade? The same person who controlled his life — Hadjar.

His diary recorded a mixture of moods: October 17: Out to Mount Vernon. . . . Bracing cool air; cloudless sky; warm autumn sunshine. Shapeless, droopy people—stuffy from Sunday morning waffles and funny papers, tired from not walking—staggered out of shiny automobiles and dragged themselves around the grounds of the old mansion.... Grasshoppers flicked themselves around before us. An occasional late bird sang from the hard, many-colored foliage. The corn was stacked in the fields.... It was very nice and encouraging, but in the distance the roar of the Sunday traffic on the big turnpike was never lost, and it was never clearer that man is a skin-disease of the earth.

Never for a moment think The Creator of the creation Is unaware of secrets of your heart And its deep rooted aspiration What you seek isn’t unattainable Free the doubts that leave you terrified For your Lord will soon give you And you will be satisfied The happiness you seek Is not to be missed One day you will find The heart that contains your rizq Sunshine will replace gloomy clouds You’ll smile your purest smiles Everything you touch will turn into gold You’ll walk blissful journeys covering miles When the time is right No man can stop the decree from passing So live through the pages of autumn For soon you’ll reach a new chapter of spring Barren lands will blossom flowers Broken hearts will be cured Roaring storms will turn gentle again You’ll earn the reward of what you endured.

To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture a season of foods unfolding as if from one single plant. Take a minute to study this creation—an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes like a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper, and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb, or root. So goes the year. First the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce, and chard (here, that’s April and May). Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower (May–June). Then tender young fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers (June), followed by green beans, green peppers, and small tomatoes (July). Then more mature, colorfully ripened fruits: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers (late July–August). Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash (August–September). Last come the root crops, and so ends the produce parade. Plainly these don’t all come from the same plant, but each comes from a plant, that’s the point—a plant predestined to begin its life in the spring and die in the fall. (A few, like onions and carrots, are attempting to be biennials, but we’ll ignore that for now.) Each plant part we eat must come in its turn—leaves, buds, flowers, green fruits, ripe fruits, hard fruits—because that is the necessary order of things for an annual plant. For the life of them, they can’t do it differently. Some minor deviations and a bit of overlap are allowed, but in general, picturing an imaginary vegetannual plant is a pretty reliable guide to what will be in season, wherever you live. If you find yourself eating a watermelon in April, you can count back three months and imagine a place warm enough in January for this plant to have launched its destiny.

...from the big tobacco barns there welled forth a fragrance that was for these Kentuckians, the soul of autumn. Oozing out into the sunshine from every crack in the great structures, it exhilarated like an elixir, like a long draught of some rich, spicy wine.

It is rather a strange and sad story,’ he went on after a pause. ‘When the world was young, and the woods were wide and wild, the Ents and the Entwives – and there were Entmaidens then: ah! the loveliness of Fimbrethil, of Wandlimb the lightfooted, in the days of our youth! – they walked together and they housed together. But our hearts did not go on growing in the same way: the Ents gave their love to things that they met in the world, and the Entwives gave their thought to other things, for the Ents loved the great trees, and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills; and they drank of the mountain-streams, and ate only such fruit as the trees let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the Trees. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests; and they saw the sloe in the thicket, and the wild apple and the cherry blossoming in spring, and the green herbs in the waterlands in summer, and the seeding grasses in the autumn fields. They did not desire to speak with these things; but they wished them to hear and obey what was said to them. The Entwives ordered them to grow according to their wishes, and bear leaf and fruit to their liking; for the Entwives desired order, and plenty, and peace (by which they meant that things should remain where they had set them). So

them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him. For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts in the mornings—what is called an “old wives’ summer.” In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in the air. On everything—far and near—lay the magic crystal glitter seen only at that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance, with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled house—which in dull weather was repulsively ugly—seemed quietly beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance. A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly wink. “What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!” (Their name for Pierre.) “Eh? Just like spring!” And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it. “To be on the march in such weather . . .” he began. Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by the authorities. “Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you.” (The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.) “ ‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day. ‘Monsieur Kiril is a man of education, who speaks French. He

It was late September in the Ohio River Valley, the dying days of summer when soaring temperatures fought autumn’s grasp. Here the sweat and sunshine lingered, a mocking presence as school began. Sullen waves of heat thickened under the claustrophobic press of low-lying clouds, while humidity amplified the temperatures into a fever dream of shimmering sidewalks and sunburnt noses.

Perpetually shrouded in a dense, clammy fog, Cardington was a depressing place, and the only really contented mortal there that chill November was the resident observer, who used to ascend to 2000 feet every morning in a balloon, and spend the day sitting happily with a book in the autumn sunshine.