AUTUMN LEAVES 221 



Poets and moralisers in all ages have said so much 

 of the fall of the leaf in autumn that a large volume 

 might easily be filled with this one subject. But it 

 would be a very sad volume, for few seem to have 

 been able to escape from the obvious lessons of decay 

 and death. A few there have been who have taken 

 brighter views of the season ; as Forbes Watson 

 noted : 



'The last leaves shiver from the trees, and the last ripe 

 fruit drops pattering to the earth, and these relics do not tell 

 us of a dreary time, and the very sadness of autumn is 

 swallowed up in the sense of its more than earthly loveliness.' 



But most of the writers seem to have taken the one 

 text only, 'We all do fade as a leaf,' and to have 

 written accordingly. And yet the coloured and the 

 falling leaf is not a sign of death, it is rather a sign 

 of the fulness of life and vigour. It is only when a 

 branch is dead that its leaves are dull and wrinkled, 

 and cling to the branch all the winter, but the full- 

 coloured and falling leaf shows that it has left behind 

 it a plump, vigorous bud, into which its life has passed, 

 and which holds in itself a colony of leaves, and 

 flowers, and fruit. Every gardener knows that a 

 cutting which keeps its withered leaves will come to 

 nothing, but that if they fall it shows that there is 

 full life behind. I wish more of our writers could 



