October is a lovely month. Still warm enough to enjoy being out of doors, and not too dark in the mornings and evenings. No wonder so many writers have eulogised about October. It's one of my favourite months.
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October."
W S Merwin in The Love of October wrote: "I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the colour
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill"
Elizabeth Enright in The Riddle of the Fly wrote “October sunshine bathed the park with such a melting light that it had the dimmed impressive look of a landscape by an old master.”
And finally, Ernest Dowson's poem Autumnal
"Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees,
That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer's loss
Seems little, dear! on days like these.
Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time's deceit.
Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.
Beyond the pearled horizons lie
Winter and night: awaiting these
We garner this poor hour of ease,
Until love turn from us and die
Beneath the drear November trees.”
I'm so pleased that I managed to write about October without a single reference to John Keats and his season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!