AN OCTOBER DAY IN IOWA 
Ay, thou art welcome, heaven’s delicious breath 1 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, 
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief. 
And the year smiles as it draws near its death. 
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay 
In the gay woods and in the golden air. 
Like to a good old age released from care. 
Journeying, in long serenity, away. 
In such a bright, late quiet would that I 
Might wear out life like thee, ’mid bowers and brooks, 
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks. 
And music of kind voices ever nigh; 
And when my last sand twinkles in the glass 
Pass silently from men as thou dost pass. 
— William Cullen Bryant. 
B ryant’s poems on October are the best to 
be found in the language because he got 
closer to nature than any other poet. The 
call of the wild was ever in his ear. He loved 
nature with a love that knew neither variableness 
nor shadow of turning and he embraced every op¬ 
portunity to “steal an hour from study and care, 
and hie me away to the woodland scene.” You 
may take a book of his poems to the woods and 
verify every line and phrase. That is why his 
