The Hour Of Autumn - The Open Book Cafe


 The Open Book Café:

The Hour Of Autumn


Can you hear the wind as it begins to howl up the land?
Can you see the choppy waves rolling t'wards the banks, in restless currency?


Welcome to The Open Book Café: Book lovers around the world. Share your thoughts on moving passages, and characters in play. What better way than to spend a small sweet slice of a somber Sunday?

Good evening, and welcome to the The Open Book Café: a weekly gathering of book lovers, from around the world.

In this post, I will share some rustic and robust passages on Autumn.


I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,


Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed


The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow...'



II

'...Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,...'


- from Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley




The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under
      hedges;
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides,
      narrow lanes and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind
      halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds' wings startled from their nests or flying
      unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as
      crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves.
      and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on 
       the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark's wing from the stubbles –
       how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the
dew flashes from its brown feathers. - John Clare



  As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,

  As I wended the shores I know,

  As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you...'  

- Walt Whitman, from As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life




Lines To A Withered Leaf Seen On A Poet's Table

By Jones Very


Poet's hand has placed thee there,

Autumn's brown and withered scroll!

Though to outward eye not fair,

Thou hast beauty for the soul,


Though no human pen has traced

On that leaf its learned lore,

Love divine the page has graced,-

What can words discover more?


Not alone dim Autumn's blast

Echoes from yon tablet sear,-

Distant music of the Past

Steals upon the poet's ear.


Voices sweet of summer hours,

Spring's soft whispers murmur by;

Feathered songs from leafy bowers

Draw his listening soul on high.




Remember that little book library, from the Introduction to this series?



Well, I found it again, and put back Summer, by Edith Wharton.

A little while after that, what do I find in a thrift store? The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2.

And here is one of the poems in that book

The Laurel Axe
by Fleur Adcock

Autumn resumes the land, ruffles the woods
with smoky wings, entangles them. Trees shine
out from their leaves, rocks mildew to moss-green;
the avenues are spread with brittle floods.

Platonic England, house of solitudes,
rests in its laurels and its injured stone,
replete with complex fortunes that are gone,
beset by dynasties of moods and clouds.

It stands, as though at ease with its own world,
the mannerly extortions, languid praise,
all that devotion long since bought and sold,

the rooms of cedar and soft-thudding baize,
tremulous boudoirs where the crystals kissed
in cabinets of amethyst and frost.


In South Western Ontario, Canada, we are hovering from shorts to trench coats. It's time to get the sweaters out folks.


Don't be dismayed,...


"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" - Ode to the West Wind, by Percy Bysshe Shelley





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