We are past the worst of the heat. The last few days have had an autumnal feel about them, hard to describe, just a sensation one gets. Well, there is a cooler breeze about but as yet no leaves on the turn. We will have to wait at least another month until that begins.

Autumn is my favourite time - there is a sad beauty about it - the going of leaves is itself a kind of a death. It is that paradox - splendour in decline, that seizes me. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote this lovely sonnet in 1917. It is hard not to feel this way sometimes. Harder, perhaps, to feel otherwise.


God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.