September

Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,
Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green.
Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing
With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.
William C. Bryant

All your renown is like the summer flower that blooms and dies; because the sunny glow which brings it forth, soon slays with parching power.
Dante Alighieri

I don’t wanna say goodbye for the summer
Knowing the love we’ll miss
Oh let us make a pledge to meet in September
And seal it with a kiss
Guess it’s gonna be a cold lonely summer
But I’ll fill the emptiness
I’ll send you all my love every day in a letter
Sealed with a kiss.
Bobby Vinton

The morrow was a bright September morn;
The earth was beautiful as if newborn;
There was nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,
Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Have a good time, but remember,
There is dander in the summer moon above.
Will I see you in September
Or loose you to a summer love.
S. Wayne and S. Edwards, 1959 song lyrics

What a pity flowers can utter no sound!—A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle … oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!
Henry Ward Beecher

September morn
Do you remember how we danced that night away
Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play
September morning still can make me feel this way.
Neil Diamond and Gilbert Becaud

Happy we who can bask in this warm September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude; whose life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord’s Mona-day as on his Suna-day.
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862

All good things vanish in less than a day,
Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay
Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year,
The earth is hell when you leav’st to appear.
Thomas Nash, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 1600

Harvest home, harvest home!
We’ve plowed, we’ve sowed
We’ve reaped, we’ve mowed
And brought safe home
Every load.
Harvest Home Song

The true beloveds of this world are in their lover’s eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child’s Sunday, lost voices, one’s favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.
Truman Capote

Lips half-willing in a doorway.
Lips half-singing at a window.
Eyes half-dreaming in the walls.
Feet half-dancing in a kitchen.
Even the clocks half-yawn the hours
And the farmers make half-answers.
Carl Sandburg, Village in Late September

I trust in Nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and Autumn garner to the ends of time.
Robert Browning

The winter is forbidden till December
And exits March the Second, on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September,
In Camelot.
Camelot, Camelot!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Camelot, Camelot,
That’s how conditions are.
Camelot, Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of
early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection
to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil
from what the first hint of autumn means.
Vita Sackville-West

The birds laugh loud and long together
When Fashion’s followers speed away
At the first cool breath of autumn weather.
Why, this is the time, cry the birds, to stay!
When the deep calm sea and the deep sky over
Both look their passion through sun-kissed space,
As a blue-eyed maid and her blue-eyed lover
Might each gaze into the other’s face.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The End of Summer

Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.
Carl von Linnaeus

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow–follow, oh-oh.
Try to Remember, Lyrics by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt

Shine on, shine on harvest moon
Up in the sky,
I ain’t had no lovin’
Since January, February, June or July
Sno Time ain’t no time to stay
Outdoors and spoon,
So shine one, shine on harvest noon
For me and my gal.
By Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, 1903

September twenty-second, Sir, the bough cracks with unpicked apples,
and at dawn the small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.
Robert Lowell

To many ancient people, the waning of the light signaled death. For example, in Welsh mythology, this is the
day of the year when the God of Darkness, Goronwy, defeats the God of Light, Llew, and takes his place as
King of the world. To this day in Japan, the equinox is celebrated by visits to the graves of family members,
at which time offerings of flowers and food are made and incense is burned. The three days preceding
and following the equinox are called higan, or the Other side of the River of Death.
September Folklore

Leaves fall,
the days grow cold.
The Goddess pulls her mantle of Earth around Her
as You, O Great Sun God, sail toward the West
to the land of eternal enchantment,
wrapped in the coolness of night.
Fruits ripen,
seeds drip,
the hours of day and night are balanced.
Mabon Sabbat and Lore

September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains of his brief life. The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath, and their shrill and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed.
September Days By Rowland E. Robinson, Vermont.

T’is the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone.
Thomas Moore, 1779-1852, The Last Rose of Summer.

Spring flowers are long since gone. Summer’s bloom hangs limp on every terrace. The gardener’s feet drag a bit on the dusty path and the hinge in his back is full of creaks.
Louise Seymour Jones

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer.
Author Unknown

Autumn arrives, array’d in splendid mein;
Vines, cluster’d full, add to the beauteous scene,
And fruit-trees cloth’d profusely laden, nod,
Complaint bowing to the fertile sod.
Farmer’s Almanac, 1818

As lovely as soft bits of fragile crinkled silk,
These rosy blossoms, clustered thick
Upon the heavy drooping boughs,
When shaken by a summer wind,
Drop down in swirling showers,
And drift awhile about the ground;
Then gathered into frothy heaps beneath the hedge,
They spread a frill of rosy lace around the green lawns edge.
Leda Clements, Crape Myrtle

September’s Baccalaureate
A combination is Of Crickets — Crows — and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze
That hints without assuming –
An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher.
Emily Dickinson, September’s Baccalaureate

Come Roger and Nell,
Some Simpkin and Bell,
East lad with his lass hither come;
With singing and dancin,
And pleasure advancing,
To celebrate Harvest Home.
An Old English Harvest Song

Drink a toast to Dionysus, the God of wine and ecstasy – The son of the Moon! Gather with friends to celebrate the vine with a bottle of good wine and good cheer. Catch the Moon’s reflection in your cup and raise it up in salutation. Now drink in Her essence and feel the presence of the God and Goddess.
September, The Harvest Moon, Moon Lore

A late summer garden has a tranquility found no other time of the year.
William Longgood

September fattens on vines.
Roses flake from the wall.
The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
Geoffrey Hill, September Song

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts
Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don’t talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise.
Allen Ginsberg, September on Jessore Road

Rain, rain, welcome back,
We’ve missed your song,
Your splatter and smack
On our dusty brown clay, dry so long.
Since last May we’ve not had a drop,
From grey-black clouds swriling by,
Or smelled wet earth, or stepped in muddy slop,
Or listened to thunder from the sky.
Michael P. Garofalo, Valley Spirit Journal, 2004

There ought to be gardens for all months in the year,
in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.
Sir Francis Bacon

Well, the sun’s not so hot in the sky today
And you know I can see summertime slipping on away
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed
So I’ll be king and you’ll be queen
Our kingdom’s gonna be this little patch of green
Won’t you lie down here right now
In this September grass
Won’t you lie down with me now
September grass.
James Taylor

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.
Sarah Teasdale, September Midnights

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen,
as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Summer night -
even the stars
are whispering to each other.
Kobayashi Issa

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.
Edwin Way Teale

Autumn begins with a subtle change in the light, with skies a deeper blue, and nights that become suddenly clear and
chilled. The season comes full with the first frost, the disappearance of migrant birds, and the harvesting of the season’s last crops.
Glenn Wolff and Jerry Dennis

The leaves of brown came tumblin’ down, remember
In September in the rain
The sun went out just like a dying ember
That September in the rain.
To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed to play a sweet refrain.
September in the Rain, Lyrics by Warren and Dubin

September leaf
Blushing…
Remembering…
The torrid kisses
…Of July
September leaf
Sensing winter
….And oblivion
Shivers…
And whispers
July, my only love Say you remember.
LaRetha Adams, Before Winter

Not every man has gentians in his house in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom, ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness
spread blue down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze, black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps give off light, lead me then, lead the way.
D. H. Lawrence, Bavarian Gentians

Happily we bask in this warm September sun,

Which illuminates all creatures…
Henry David Thoreau

Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always
been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Henry James

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil.
And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November.
Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer.
Helen Hunt Jackson, September, 1830-1885

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies?
Gerard Manly Hopkins, Hurrahing in Harvest, 1918

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf
shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Crown’d with the sickle, and the sheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o’er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on.
James Thomson, Autumn, 1730

School,
Effort, and
Play.
Trying your best
Each hour of the day,
Making new friends,
Being good as you can
Exciting discoveries,
Reading books with a friend.
Boni Fulgham

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon

September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.
Alexander Theroux, 1981

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit,
and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
John Donne, 1620

Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas.
Edward Dowden, In September

‘I grow old, I grow old,’ the garden says. It is nearly October. The bean leaves grow paler, now lime, no yellow, no leprous, dissolving before my eyes. The pods curl and do not grow, turn limp and blacken. The potato vines wither and the tubers huddle underground in their rough weather-proof jackets, waiting to be dug. The last tomatoes ripen and split on the vine; it takes days for them to turn fully now, and a few of the green ones are beginning to fall off.
Robert Finch

The Druids call this celebration, Mea’n Fo’mhair, and honor the Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering libations to trees. Offerings of ciders, wines, herbs and fertilizer are appropriate at this time…. Mabon is considered a time of the Mysteries. It is a time to honor Aging Deities and the Spirit World….
Mabon by Akasha

But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head … The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on.
Robert Finch

‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer, 1830

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
William Wordsworth, September

Equal dark, equal light
Flow in Circle, deep insight
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!
So it flows, out it goes
Three-fold back it shall be
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!
Night An’Fey, Transformation of Energy

Smoke hangs like haze over harvested fields,
The gold of stubble, the brown of turned earth
And you walk under the red light of fall
The scent of fallen apples, the dust of threshed grain
The sharp, gentle chill of fall.
Here as we move into the shadows of autumn
The night that brings the morning of spring
Come to us, Lord of Harvest
Teach us to be thankful for the gifts you bring us …
Autumn Equinox Ritual

Alas, that my heart is a lute,
Whereon you have learned to play!
For a many years it was mute,
Until one summer’s day
You took it, and touched it, and made it thrill,
And it thrills and throbs, and quivers still!
Anne Barnard, My Heart is a Lute, 1815

Sorrow and scarlet leaf,
Sad thoughts and sunny weather.
Ah me, this glory and this grief
Agree not well together!
Thomas Parsons, 1880, A Song For September

For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go.
George Washington Cable

The goldenrod is yellow
The corn is turning brown
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.
Childrens song

Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away
Our hearts were ringing
In the key that our souls were singing.
As we danced in the night,
Remember how the stars stole the night away.
September, Lyrics by Maurice White, Charles Stemney and Verdine White