Welcome, October!

Today, I am welcoming the month of October with two of my favorite things:  ~ Poetry and PreRaphaelite art ~

There is something so fleetingly beautiful about this month to which I have always been drawn... the reds, orange, yellows and green.

And, there is a feeling that creeps into me and I cannot help but wonder if I have always felt the veil between the worlds thinning, for my thoughts often travel to those loved ones who have gone before me.  I cannot help but drink in every color and absorb the wild emotion of this season; for soon, we shall be blanketed in white for months.  The last hurrah of nature never fails to deliver....

 Wild roses burst from their hips one last time.  

Goldenrod and purple asters are sprinkled along the roadside. 

 Mums stand guard on every doorstep.  

Apples and pumpkins are abundant at every farm stand.

The smell of the crisp Autumn air with the scent of wood burning from afar. Leave it to Robert Frost to describe it so perfectly....

"O hushed October morning mild, 

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; 

Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all. 

The crows above the forest call; 

Tomorrow they may form and go. 

O hushed October morning mild, 

Begin the hours of this day slow. 

Make the day seem to us less brief. 

Hearts not averse to being beguiled, 

Beguile us in the way you know. 

Release one leaf at break of day; 

At noon release another leaf; 

One from our trees, one far away."

-   Robert Frost, October

"Listen!  the wind is rising,

and the air is wild with leaves,

We have had our summer evenings,

now for October eves!"

-  Humbert Wolfe 

"The clump of maples on the hill,

And this one near the door,

Seem redder, quite a lot, this year

Than last, or year before;

I wonder if it's jest because

I Love the Old State more!"

-   David L. Cady, October in Vermont  

"O suns and skies and clouds of June,

And flowers of June together,

Ye cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather."

"Colors burst in wild explosions

Fiery, flaming shades of fall

All in accord with my pounding heart

Behold the autumn-weaver

In bronze and yellow dying

Colors unfold into dreams

In hordes of a thousand and one

The bleeding

Unwearing their masks to the last notes of summer

Their flutes and horns in nightly swarming

Colors burst within

Spare me those unending fires

Bestowed upon the flaming shades of fall."

-   Dark Tranquility:  With the Flaming Shades of Fall  

"Just before the death of flowers,

And before they are buried in snow,

There comes a festival season

When nature is all aglow."

-   Author Unknown

"The sweet calm sunshine of October, now

    Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold

The purple oak-leaf falls; the birch bough

    drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold."

-   William Cullen Bryant

"Between the heavens and the earth

The way now opens to bring forth

The Hosts of those who went on before;

Hail!  We see them now come through the Open Door.

Now the veils of worlds are thin; 

To move out you must move in.

Let the Balefires now be made, 

Mine the spark within them laid.

Move beyond the fiery screen, 

Between the seen and the unseen;

Shed your anger and your fear, 

Live anew in a new year!"

-   Lore of the Door  

"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October." 

-  Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes.  

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits."

-   Samuel Butler

"The stillness of October gold

Went out like beauty from a face."

-   E. A. Robinson