AUTUMN 15 



any period of the year. But we have several Indian summers. 

 Our ' St. Martin's summer/ which usually falls rather before 

 the saint's date on November nth, is an event to expect 

 with pleasure. It sets the thrushes singing, and gives the 

 elm leaves another week or two of life. 



One must not altogether deny the melancholy of autumn 

 in which the world profoundly believes. It is true that in 

 autumn as in spring nature distributes and sows her seed, 

 and much of it germinates within a short space, but much 

 also lies dormant. Some of the bulbs and tubers cannot by 

 any persuasion be forced into growth. A potato tuber must 

 go through a proper period of invisible but definite 

 preparation before it can put forth spring shoots. It must 

 progressively mature within itself. It is so with many bulbs. 

 The autumn and the winter is for them a period not of 

 sleep but of something akin to ripening. 



Perhaps it is because autumn has so many moods, is an 

 epitome of so much, that it appeals above all other seasons 

 to the poets. The autumn poems are the finest of all. 

 Keats's ' Ode to Autumn,' the 'season of mists and mellow 

 fruitfulness,' is often held to be the very best of all the odes 

 ever written. What pictures of homely England that last 

 verse calls up : 



' Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 



Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, 

 While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day 

 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; 

 Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

 Among the river sallows, borne aloft 



Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 

 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 

 Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 

 The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 



And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.' 



In Shelley's catalogue of masterpieces there are not half 



