Russet woods of Autumn, here you are once more! I saw you, golden
and brown, in the afternoon sunshine to-day. Crisp leaves were
falling, as I went along the foot-path through the woods: crisp
leaves lie upon the green graves in the churchyard, fallen from the
ashes: and on the shrubbery walks, crisp leaves from the beeches,
accumulated where the grass bounds the gravel, make a warm edging,
irregular, but pleasant to see. It is not that one is 'tired of
summer:' but there is something soothing and pleasing about the
autumn days. There is a great clearness of the atmosphere sometimes;
sometimes a subdued, gray light is diffused everywhere. In the
country, there is often, on these afternoons, a remarkable stillness
in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down.
I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass
is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have
decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not
sad. It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all
through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October
is one of the finest months of the year, and that we have many
warm, bright, still days yet before us. Of course we know we are
practising upon ourselves a cheerful, transparent delusion; even
as the man of forty-eight often declares that about forty-eight
or fifty is the prime of life. I like to remember that Mrs. Hemans
was describing October, when she began her beautiful poem on The
Battle of Morgarlen, by saying that, 'The wine-month shone in its
golden prime:' and I think that in these words the picture presented
to the mind of an untravelled Briton, is not the red grapes hanging in
blushing profusion, but rather the brown, and crimson, and golden
woods, in the warm October sunshine. So, you russet woods of autumn,
you are welcome once more; welcome with all your peculiar beauty,