22 SOME AUTUMN DAYS IN IOWA 
The New England poets have been wont to 
follow these conceptions of the later Autumn. 
Whittier sees all things around him stark and 
dumb, praying for the snows to come. Bryant 
mourns because “The south wind searches for the 
flowers, whose fragrance late he bore, and sighs to 
find them in the wood and by the stream no more.” 
But the Iowa poet ought to sing in a happier strain. 
October in Iowa runs well into the month of 
November; for the first half of the month there 
is little difference. The many warm, sweet sunny 
days take all of the sadness out of the dying year. 
The sun smiles gently and benignly through the 
smoky air and gives a halo of amber and purple to 
the soft sepias and gleaming grays of the wood¬ 
lands which a month ago were brilliant with 
crimson and gold. 
“No flowers, no leaves, no birds,” forsooth! 
If only Hood could have taken a walk through an 
Iowa wood, some bright sunny morning in early 
November. The willows stand guard at the very 
entrance to the wood. All through October when 
the wondrous coloration of the oaks and maples, 
alders and aspens, was running up and down the 
gamut of brilliancy, the willows retained their soft 
and restful green. Now the green is slowly 
searing to brown and the leaves are fluttering down 
