entering upon the last week of august, i may call the year still summer,—yes, still summer, but the autumn days are drawing near. “september”—directly i pen that word in the right-hand corner of my letters, a great gap seems to have opened between the summer and me. autumn days are here: the gladness and glee of the year have gone, and a tender sweet sadness and mellow lucid gloom seem to have gathered over the still calm expecting landscape. the corn is all cut and carried, the pale stubble fields, edged with the deep green hedges, lie a little blankly on the hill-side or in the valley; the brighter summer-shoots of the elms and the apple-trees have all sobered down now into uniform darkness; the little blue harebells tremble in clusters on the dried sunny hedge-banks; the gossamers twinkle on the grass, late into the morning, with a thick dew that has not yet quite made up its mind to be frost. the partridges whirr up from under your feet as you throw your leg over that164 stile; the rooks wheel home much earlier to bed. the fungus tribe begins to look up, and after a shower you come suddenly, as you cross the meadow, upon a cluster of buff-white mushrooms, with the delicious rose-grey under their eaves, and gathering them for the wife at home, you wander here and there to catch the white gleam among the grass, and are pleased, when successful, as a child with his first spring daisies. quiet, tenderly-sad autumn days, after the harvest is gathered in and the plums are picked!
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“autumn! forth from glowing orchards stepped he gaily, in a gown of warm russet, freaked with gold, and with a visage sunny brown; and he laughed for very joy, and he danced from too much pleasure, and he sang old songs of harvest, and he quaffed a mighty measure.
but above this wild delight an overmastering graveness rose, and the fields and trees seemed thoughtful in their absolute repose; and i saw the woods consuming in a many-coloured death— streaks of yellow flame, down-deepening through the green that lingereth;
sanguine flushes, like a sunset, and austerely-shadowing brown. and i heard within the silence the nuts sharply rattling down; and i saw the long dark hedges all alight with scarlet fire, where the berries, pulpy-ripe, had spread their bird-feasts on the briar.”
we have here, save for some little flaws, a perfect painting of the intensely still, calm, expecting attitude of nature, the absolute repose of the year, which rests by its work done, and asks, in a quiet peace, in a deep trust, of the all-wise and the all-loving, “what next?”
“calm is the morn without a sound, calm as to suit a calmer grief, and only through the faded leaf, the chestnut pattering to the ground.”
autumn days! i think they would be very sad indeed if we could only see decay in them, and if god had not put a little safe bud and germ of hope into every bulb and upon every branch—a promise of future life amid universal death: just as he put that green promise-bud into the heart of adam and eve, when such a dreadful death had gathered about the present and the future for them—declaring, to their seemingly victorious foe, of the woman’s seed, that
“it shall bruise thy head.”
a tiny dear little germ of a bud, and oh, how many hundred summers and winters passed before it developed into the166 glorious perfect flower! and so now there is yet a sadness, but only a cheery, gentle, tender sadness, about autumn days to the heart that is waiting for god. and it seems to me wonderful that he should have given us one of his own minstrels to sit on the twigs as they grow bare and lonely-looking, and to express to us just the feeling that autumn calls up within the heart, and that we yearn to have set to music for us. the little robin waits his time; he does not cease, indeed, to trill his note in spring, although we do not notice him then amid our blackbirds and thrushes and blackcaps and nightingales; for he is very humble-hearted, and content to be set aside when we can do without him. but autumn days come, and the nightingale has fled, and the blackcap is far away, and the lark and the thrush and the blackbird are silent;—then the robin draws near. close to our houses he comes, with his cheery warm breast, and kind bright eye, and his message from god. and then he interprets the autumn to us, in those broken, tenderly-glad thrills of song, that, simple though they be, can sometimes disturb the heart with beauty that it cannot fathom, but that agitates and shakes it even to the sudden brimming of the eyes with tears. “yes, it is sad,” he says, “to see the flowers dying, and the leaves falling, and the harvest over. it is sad—not a little sad—still, cheer up, cheer up; have a good heart. god has told me, and my little warm heart knows, that it is not all sad. i know it is not. i can’t tell why. but it can’t be all sad; for god sent me to sing in the autumn days. he taught me my song, and i know that there is a great deal in it about peace and joy. and it must be right; for though my nest is choked up, and my little167 ones are flown, and my mate has left me, i can’t help singing it. cheer up. it is sad, but not all sad. peace and joy—joy and peace.”
“the morning mist is cleared away, yet still the face of heaven is grey, nor yet th’ autumnal breeze has stirred the grove, faded, yet full, a paler green skirts soberly the tranquil scene, the red-breast warbles round this leafy cove.
“sweet messenger of ‘calm decay,’ saluting sorrow as you may, as one still bent to find or make the best, in thee and in this quiet mead, the lesson of sweet peace i read, rather in all to be resigned than blest.
“oh cheerful, tender strain! the heart that duly bears with you its part, singing so thankful to the dreary blast, though gone and spent its joyous prime, and on the world’s autumnal time, ’mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast,
“that is the heart for watchman true, waiting to see what god will do.”
* * * * *
let us walk out into the garden. i love an autumn garden, and i think that at any season of the year a garden is a book in which we may read a great deal about god. on the sunday evenings, therefore, i like to sit there, under a tree may be, with some peaceful heavenly book, sometimes to read, and sometimes to close over my thumb, and keep just as company while i meditate; and god’s works seem an apt comment on god’s word, which i have heard or read that day.
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but now we will go in the early morning before breakfast—
“to bathe our brain from drowsy night in the sharp air and golden light. the dew, like frost, is on the pane, the year begins, though fair, to wane: there is a fragrance in its breath, which is not of the flowers, but death.”
and we pass out of the window that opens into the garden under the tulip-tree standing so tall and still, with pale green and now yellow-touched leaves, that harmonise well with the pale sky against which you see them. the beech in the shrubbery has begun to “gather brown”; the tall dark elms that shut it in remind you vividly of the poet’s description of
“autumn laying here and there a fiery finger on the leaves.”
against the thick box-trees underneath you love to see
“the sunflower, shining fair, ray round with flames her disc of seed,”
and some tall hollyhocks, still keeping up a brave cheer of rose-coloured and primrose and black blossoms upon their highest spike. the grass is glistening with heavy dew, sapphire, rose-diamond, pure brilliant, and yellow-diamond;—move a little, and one drop changes from one to the other of these. walking across the lawn towards that rose-bed, you leave distinct green foot-prints upon the hoary grass. perhaps the feeling that at last almost weighs upon you, and depresses you, is the intense, waiting stillness of everything. that apple-tree, bending down to the lawn with rosy apples, it seems so perfectly still and169 resting, that it quite makes you start to hear one of its red apples drop upon the path. the hurry and bustle and eager growth of the year has all gone by: these roses, that used to send out crowding bud after bud;—for some weeks a pause, a waiting, has come over them. this one purely white blossom, you watched it developing, unfolding so slowly, that it never seemed to change, taking a week for what would have taken no more than half a summer day, until at last it had opened fully, and hung down its head towards the brown damp mould. and there it seemed to stop. it seems not to have changed now for a week or two—why should it hurry to fade?—there were no more to come after it should go. now half of it has detached itself, and lies in a little unbroken snowy heap on the ground. how quietly it must have fallen there! and the other half still stays on the tree, and leans down, and watches with a strange calm over the fallen white heaped petals,
“innumerably frost impearled.”
something of depression comes over you, i say, and there happens to be no cheery robin just now to put in a word, nor sedate rook sailing with still wings overhead across the pale sky, to give you even the poorer encouragement of his mere stoic caw. why are you depressed? what is this strange sadness that seems to you to lurk under the exquisite calm and beautiful stillness of the autumn morning?
do you hardly know? i will tell you. that quiet is the quiet of death coming on; that calm waiting and expectancy is the herald of its approach, the beauty is the hectic flush of the consumptive cheek. death is sad for life to contemplate;170 and we are so much akin to all this decay, that this quiet tells us of it almost more than the heavy bell that now and then stirs the air of the summer morning. the coming death of the summer leaves and the summer flowers preaches to us a solemn sermon of our own death drawing near. watch that leaf circling down from that silent tree, and listen to the echo in your own heart:
“we all do fade as a leaf.”
yes, death, the sense of advancing death, is at the root of your sadness and depression. death in its beauty, in a tender loveliness—death, the angel, not the skeleton, yet still death. and,
“whatever crazy sorrow saith, no life that breathes with human breath has ever truly longed for death.
“’tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, oh life, not death, for which we pant, more life, and fuller, that i want.”
and a great warrior, of long ago, one who had less cause than most to fear death, yet said:
“we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”
well, this sadness must remain in some measure; the flowers must die, and the leaves must fall, and the robin’s attempts to cheer us bring the tears very near our eyes. “sin entered into the world, and death by sin”: and the child of such a parent cannot bring joy as his attendant. still, let us go on with our171 garden walk, and see whether, even in the face of nature, there be nothing else but only this peaceful waiting sadness.
take these branches of the lilac bushes, that we remember bending under their scented masses in the warm early summer days. bare and damp, bare of flowers, and only clad with sickly yellow leaves; but what else can we see in them? there is not one (examine them well) which has not already a full green bud of promise, developed even before the leaves, the old leaves, have fallen away. look on the ground in the shrubberies. what are these little green points that begin just to break the mould? ah, they are indeed the myriad white constellations of snowdrops already beginning to dawn, and the frail flower will sleep warm and safe in the bulb, under the patchwork counterpane of gold beech leaves, and bronze-purple pear-leaves, and silver-white poplar, and come out among the first to tell you that nature is not dead, but sleepeth. look farther, on to the flower borders, at the base of the tall gaunt stalks of the once stately queen of flowers. lo, there already
“green above the ground appear the lilies of another year.”
not all sad, then; no, not all sad! memory droops indeed with dewy eyes, but the baby, hope, is laughing on her lap. there is a resurrection for the flowers and the trees; true, this of itself could not assure us that there is one for man. but god has told us in the book of his word, the meaning of what we read in the book of his works. and we know now what the robin meant, in his small song without words,172 and we know what the promise of spring means, hidden in each autumn twig; and indeed, the garden and the field, and every hedgerow, and every grass, gather now into a great chorus that take up an apostle’s words,
“this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?”
but it is now nearly half-past eight o’clock, and the family will be assembling for prayer. let us pass round this walk, with hearts cheerful, or only tinged with a shade rather of quiet than of gloom—
“and then return, by walls of peach, and pear-trees bending to our reach, and rose-beds with the roses gone, to bright-laid breakfast.”
autumn days. such thoughts as these may interpret to us the strange oppressive sadness that comes over us, as we watch them stealing on; also, why it is that this is such a tender, sweet sadness, and not a dark, deadly gloom—the shade of a solemn grove, not the blackness of a vault. death is indeed a valley of shadow still. but the rays of the sun of righteousness have penetrated even there—and the hideous darkness is softened to a tender twilight hush. oh,
“thanks be to god, which giveth us the victory through our lord jesus christ.”
and now the autumn days are very calm and restful to think upon, and there is a deep peace in the autumn of life,173 for which we are well content to exchange the flush and glee of spring, and the glory and glow of summer. our snowdrops and our primroses are all over, our lilac and laburnum, roses and lilies, all died long ago; even the fruit is plucked, except for the gleam of a stray red apple that burns upon the nearly leafless bough; and the corn is all carried, and we are wandering over life’s once waving fields, collecting just the last gleanings for our master. our larks are silent in the fallows, our thrushes and blackbirds voiceless in the groves; the rich flood of the nightingale’s thrilling song has long been lost to our hearts. the withered leaves sail down about us, the mists sleep on the hills, the dew lies thick in the valleys. but we are very happy and peaceful; even here there is a stray flower or two, and the autumn crocus droops on the garden beds; and the berries are bright in the hedges, under the feathery tufts of the “traveller’s joy.” and our heart is well satisfied with the robin’s song of trust and content, that has taken the place of—if richer and fuller—yet less spiritual and more distracting strains. there is an intense waiting calm; but, oh, such thoughts of life!—life everlasting, life indeed—push their way through the yet unfallen leaves of this frail existence, and that small cheery melody is, we well know, the prelude to the full symphonies that shall burst from angel choirs.
how beautiful a time, thus thought of, is life’s autumn time! i love to read of such a calm season in the life of a good man—a calm only broken by flashes of exultation, that come, like the aurora borealis, into the twilight sky. there is a sadness, no doubt—there must be—in the coming shade of death which deepens on the path. but the bud of life in the very heart of174 death; of this we are more and more conscious, the closer we draw near to the withered branches. and, like the fabled scent of the spice islands, even over the darkening seas are wafted to us sweet odours from the promised land.
* * * * *
autumn days—when the flowers are over, and the harvest well-nigh gathered in, and the flush and the eagerness very far behind, and the strength and the vigour things also of the past:—i think they are sweet days to which to look forward amid life’s hurry and bustle, its excitement of laughter and tears. a very peaceful land, a land of beulah, where repose seems to reign, and all seems “only waiting.” no more wild dreams, it is true, of what life is going to be, but then no sad wakings, and, lo, it was a dream! no more quick blood coursing in the veins, no more excess of animal life making stillness impossible and silence torture; no more young devotion and quick enthusiasm, warming the heart even to tinder, ready to flare at the first spark of friendship or love. no more glow of poetry cast about every face, and every daisy, and every sky, and every scene of every act of the coming years. no more expectation of becoming a great poet, a mighty warrior, an evangeliser of the world. and then no vigour to act, as when life went on; no leading the front of the battle, striking strong strokes for the right; no rejoicing in the strength that has now come, and that is still, still in its prime.
all that, and more, has passed away from life’s autumn days. it was, perhaps, rather sad to feel these things departing; to notice growth first come to a standstill—and then, here and175 there the streak of autumn, and the first yellow leaves stealing down. to find the years so short, instead of so long; to lose the wonder and the thrill at the first snowdrop, the first cowslip; the first nest low in the bushes with five blue eggs;176 the first excursion round the park wall for violets, or into the wood for nuts. to lose the glow of early love, the despair of early disappointment, the vigour of early intention and action; and to mellow down into a half-light, undisturbed by any of those violent lights and shadows. it was, i say, perhaps rather sad to feel these things departing.
but now they have gone, and the autumn days have come, and the heart has settled down to this state of things, and is content that it should be so. it is better, far better, the old man sees, to be in the autumn of life, though he yet thinks tenderly, lovingly, of those young days in the impetuous, over-blossomed spring. the “visionary gleam” has left his sky. but a truer, if a quieter lustre has arisen in it and abides. “there hath passed a glory from the earth.” but the glory has been transferred to heaven. it was sad, at first, when the glamour, and the magic, and the glow, passed away from this world, which, to youth’s heart seemed so exceedingly, inexpressibly glorious and fair. but it is better so. a mirage gave, indeed, a certain sweet mysterious light to life’s horizon, and he could not but feel dashed at first to find little but bare sand where the unreal brightness had been. but he journeyed on, learning, somewhat sadly, in manhood, god’s loving lesson, that we are strangers and pilgrims upon earth, that we have no continuing city here, not love, nor fame, nor wealth, nor power; none of these could, even had we attained it, prove a city of rest: we must still journey on before we can sit down satisfied. and god’s true servant, in his autumn days, has learned not to miss nor to mourn over youth’s mirage. nay, his future has “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to177 shine in it. for the glory of god doth lighten it, and the lamb is the light thereof.”
he looks at the sky, which is certainly darkening, because life’s one-day sun is going down. but, the lower it sinks, the less he laments it, for he finds that it did indeed hide from him the vast tracts of infinity, and close him in, by its light, in a small low-ceiled room. oh quiet days of peace and reverence and mild serenity; the rocking waves of the passions asleep about the tossed heart, and the glittering thoughts of heaven reflected instead from the calm soul; and its speechless infinite depths gradually mirroring themselves in the being! happy days, when life’s feverish, exciting novel is closed, and we are just reading quietly for an hour in the book of peace, before the time comes for us to go off to bed! happy days; when god himself is striking off one by one the fetters and manacles of earth, and will soon send his angel to open for us the last iron gate of earth’s prison!
how thankful we should be, as we grow into the autumn, for those kind words which assure us that life’s beginning, not life’s end, is then really near; that it is but the bud of immortal youth that is pushing off those withered leaves of mortality; for those who have given the year of their life to god; or, at least (such is his mercy in christ jesus), the earnest gleaning of its late months. for else, how sad to watch the sun setting, the only sun we know of, and to hope for no long day beyond. think of what a wise heathen said of old age. cicero wrote a treatise, a wonderfully beautiful treatise, in praise of it. but all this was but playing with his own sadness, in his old age; pleading the cause of a client, in whose cause178 he did not believe. for, after all, he writes his real thought to his friend atticus. “old age,” he says, “has embittered me—my life is spent.” sad, yet true from his point of view. sad—all spent; and no good hope of a “treasure in the heavens that faileth not.” how even one of the little ones in our village schools could have cheered up sad cicero!
now see what christianity can do, and has done. think of waiting simeon:
“lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
hear aged paul, the great champion apostle, leaning now on his sword, and exhorting the younger warriors who are leading on that war, that he soon must leave. what peace, nay, what exultation, flashes through his waiting!
and a picture arises before us of another aged, very aged man, ending the bible and his life with the solemn rapturous words of glowing expectation—
“he which testifieth these things saith, surely i come quickly. amen. even so, come, lord jesus!”
there is another aspect of autumn days, dreary and sad as they apply to the worldling. but to the obedient faithful child of god, their sadness, we have seen, is gentle, peaceful sadness, a tender hush more than counterbalanced by the promise of we know not yet, what exceeding ecstasy and glow of life, while we speak of it as the life everlasting. aye,
“the grass withereth, the flower fadeth,”
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and there must be a hush over autumn days, because death must be sad, even when it is beautiful. but how sweet and glorious, amid the fall and decay of the loveliness and beauty around us, to be able to rest our heart quietly upon a land beyond earth’s horizon; and to look forward brightly and happily across these changes, “to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.”
