SEPTEMBER SONGS

"AUTUMN FLOWERS AND APPLES" by Timothy Easton

(This has got to be my very favorite painting depicting autumn, and I unashamedly use it over and over in my blog!)

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"September: it was the most beautiful of words, he'd always felt, evoking orange flowers, swallows, and regret."

~ Alexander Theroux ~

Last autumn, I was all about writing: I was consumed with setting down the fictional, vintage-style diary called The Autumn Sketch Book of Bess Stanhope, a 1920s school teacher in North Dakota. This year, I seem to be into art: the Victorian - or at least traditional - type paintings of autumn, and the lyrical poetry of September, written by others far more talented than myself.

Therefore, I'm sharing some September songs - words and images of this beautiful time of year.

"A REST AT HARVEST 1865" by William-Adolphe Bourgereau

"Tang of fruitage in the air;
Red boughs bursting everywhere;
Shimmering of seeded grass;
Hooded gentians all a'mass.
Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind
Tearing off the husky rind,
Blowing feathered seeds to fall
By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.
Beech trees in golden haze;
Hardy sumachs all ablaze,
Glowing through the silver birches.
How that pine tree shouts and lurches!
From the sunny door-jamb high,
Swings the shell of a butterfly.
Scrape of insect violins
Through the stubble shrilly dins.
Every blade's a minaret
Where a small muezzin's set,
Loudly calling us to pray
At the miracle of day.
Then the purple-lidded night
Westering comes, her footsteps light
Guided by the radiant boon
Of a sickle-shaped new moon."

~ Amy Lowell~ "Late September"

"THE CIDER MILL" by John George Brown

"The breezes taste
Of apple peel,
The air is full
Of smells to feel -

Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Drying grass,
New books and blackboards
Chalk in class.

The bee, his hive
Well-honey, hums
While Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.

Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze."

~ John Updike ~ "September"

"AUTUMN LEAVES" by Thomas James Lloyd

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sand grains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air."

~ Theodore Roethke ~ "The Far Field"

"OYSTER RIVER SEPTEMBER" by Jan Blencowe

"There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!"

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

"GATHERING WHEAT" by Thomas Ridgway Knight

"September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains in his brief life. The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath, and their shrill and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed."

~ Rowland E. Robinson ~ "September Days"

"HARVEST" by Arkadi Plastov

"Harvest home, harvest home!

We've plowed, we've sowed

We've reaped, we've mowed

And brought safe home

Every load."

~ Traditional Harvest Home Song ~

"SEPTEMBER IN PROVENCE" by Francoise Persillon

"The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown
The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes

Are curling in the sun;

In dusty pods of milkweed

Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,

In every meadow nook;

And asters by the brook-side

Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes' sweet odors rise;

At noon the roads all flutter

With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer's best of weather,

And autumn's best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty

Which floods the earth and air

Is unto me the secret

Which makes September fair.

'Tis a thing which I remember

To name it thrills me yet:

One day of one September

I never can forget."

~Helen Hunt Jackson ~ "September"