"Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile" - William Cullen Bryant

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,

and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth

seeking the successive autumns."

George Eliot

"Autumn is a second spring

when every leaf is a flower."

Albert Camus

"Autumn's the mellow time."

William Allingham

"Autumn burned brightly, 

a running flame through the mountains,

a torch flung to the trees."

Faith Baldwin

"No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace

as I have seen in one Autumnal face."

John Donne

"Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn."

Elizabeth Lawrence

"October's poplars are flaming torches

lighting the way to winter."

Nova Bair

"Falling leaves hide the path so quietly."

John Bailey

"Wild is the music of autumnal wind

 among the faded woods."

William Wordsworth

"For man, autumn is a time of harvest,

of gathering together.

For nature, it is a time of sowing,

of scattering abroad."

Edwin Way Tea

A FRAIL CANOE

Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust,

playing with a broken twig all the morning.

I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.

I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.

Perhaps you glance at me and think, 

'What a stupid game to spoil your morning, with!'

Child, I have forgotten the art of being

absorbed in sticks and mud pies.

I seek out costly playthings 

and gather lumps of gold and silver.

With whatever you find you create your

glad games, I spent both my time and my

strength over things I never can obtain.

In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire,

and forget that I too am playing a game.

Rabindranath Tagore

AGEING GRACEFULLY

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Shakespeare Sonnet #5