THOUGHT(S) FOR THE DAY [ Edited ]

[becke_davis]

I thought it would be fun to start a thread where we could put a garden quote, verse or a short excerpt as a "thought for the day." Some days we might have more than one thought; other days I might forget to post one. Feel free to add your own!

Here's my contribution for today:

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. 

~Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

[becke_davis]

"Smoke hangs like haze over harvested fields, 
The gold of stubble, the brown of turned earth
And you walk under the red light of fall
The scent of fallen apples, the dust of threshed grain
The sharp, gentle chill of fall.
Here as we move into the shadows of autumn
The night that brings the morning of spring
Come to us, Lord of Harvest
Teach us to be thankful for the gifts you bring us ..."
-  Autumn Equinox Ritual

[Choisya]

Lovely thought Becke - here is my offering.

From September by Christina Rossetti:-

My song is half a sigh

Because my green leaves die,

Sweet are my fruits, but all my leaves are dying;

And well may Autumn sigh,

And well may I

Who watch the sere leaves flying.

My leaves that fade and fall,

I note you one and all;

I call you, and the Autumn wind is calling,

Lamenting for your fall,

And for the path

You spread on earth in falling.

[becke_davis]

Oh, I love Christina Rossetti, Choisya - thanks so much for posting that! Here's another good one:

"The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."
-   John Updike, September

[Choisya]

I like that one Becke - have sent it to my grand-daughter who has just started a new school. 

---

becke_davis wrote:

Oh, I love Christina Rossetti, Choisya - thanks so much for posting that! Here's another good one:

[becke_davis]

There are so many good ones for this time of year:

"A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made.  The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air."
-   Eric Sloane

[becke_davis]

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.

Faith Baldwin

[becke_davis]

All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it . . . bearing them all away to the green fields in the South. - Laura Ingalls Wilder

[Choisya]

'Delicious Autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.' George Eliot. 

[becke_davis]

Another good one, Choisya!

Here's mine for the day:

"In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfies
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
the grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all,
Flowers in the summer
Fires in the fall! "
-   Robert Louis Stevenson, Autumn Fires

[becke_davis]

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. 
- P. D. James

[Choisya]

As we have been chatting about tulips, here is a poem about them which I particularly like:-

TULIPS

An age being mathematical, these flowers
Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized
By men with wakened, speculative minds,
And when with mathematics they explored
The Macrocosm, and came at last to
The Vital Spirit of the World, and named it
Invisible Pure Fire, or, say, the Light,
The Tulips were the Light's receptacles.
The gold, the bronze, the red, the bright-swart Tulips!
No emblems they for us who no more dream
Of mathematics burgeoning to light
With Newton's prism and Spinoza's lens,
Or berkeley's ultimate, Invisible Pure Fire.
In colored state and carven brilliancy
We see them now, or, more illumined,
In sudden fieriness, as flowers fit
To go with vestments red on Pentecost.

by Paidraic Colum.

[becke_davis]

I've never come across that before, Choisya! Thank you so much for sharing it with us!

"September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret."
-   Alexander Theroux, 1981

[becke_davis]

I've never known anyone yet who doesn't suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around... We're all eight years old again and anything is possible.
-- Sue Grafton

[becke_davis]

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.
~Emily Dickinson

[becke_davis]

Treasury of Garden Verse 

Royal Horticultural Society Treasury of Garden Writing and Treasury of Garden Verse 

The Oxford Book of Garden Verse

 

[becke_davis]

"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

[Choisya]

October's Party by George Cooper

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.

[becke_davis]

"Clouds gather, treetops toss and sway;
But pour us wine, an old one!
That we may turn this dreary day
To golden, yes, to golden!

Autumn has come, but never fear,
Wait but a little while yet,
Spring will be here, the skies will clear,
And fields stand deep in violets.

The heavenly blue of fresh new days
Oh, friend, you must employ them
Before they pass away. Be brave!
Enjoy them; oh, enjoy them!"
-   Theodor Storm,  A Song in October 

[Choisya]

Ah, that poem reminds me of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale Becke, second verse:

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool'd a long time in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provencal song and sunburn't mirth...

Which reminds me to tell you that I have a good crop of grapes on my Moselle vine this year. (Tried to  paste a pic but it didn't work.)