There is something about the dying of
summer bloom and leaves falling from trees—scurrying to oblivion in cold autumn wind. . . that brings a tinge of sad feeling. Oh,
beautiful colors bring delight to the eyes, and often, after a cold
night, the air warms to perfection, but there is no holding on;
winter comes and with it cold death.
The beauty to all this is
renewal. We know that life comes back again in the spring and with it
a new face of youth. And this is the stuff of poetry and art: the
wheel of life, death, and resurrection. The eternal working of the
Creator in His Cosmos.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1883)
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?