The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

Sunset is such a sad hour,” she said, presently. “If I watch the end of a day — any day — I always feel it’s the end of a whole epoch. And the autumn! It might as well be the end of everything,” he said. “That’s why I hate cold countries, and love the warm ones, where there’s no winter, and when night comes you feel an opening up of the life there, instead of a closing down. Don’t you feel that?

A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives — all bear secret relations to our destinies.

Cool pools from a tired land sink now in the peace of evening Clouds weaken and die. The sun, an orange skull, whispers quietly, becomes an island, & is gone. There they are watching us everything will be dark. The light changed. We were aware knee-deep in the fluttering air as the ships move on trains in their wake.

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Slowly, slowly, the autumn draws to its close. Cruelly cold the wind congeals the dew. Vines and grasses will not be green again— The trees in my garden are withering forlorn. The pure air is cleansed of lingering lees And mysteriously, Heaven's realms are high. Nothing is left of the spent cicada's song, A flock of geese goes crying down the sky. The myriad transformations unravel one another And human life how should it not be hard?
From ancient times there was none but had to die, Remembering this scorches my very heart. What is there I can do to assuage this mood? Only enjoy myself drinking my unstrained wine. I do not know about a thousand years, Rather let me make this morning last forever.

I turn away from the light to the holy, inexpressible, mysterious night. Far away lies the world − sunk into a
deep vault, its place waste and lonely. Across my heart strings a low melancholy plays. I will fall in drops of dew and merge with the ashes. Distant memories, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a long life – all arise dressed in grey, like evening mist after sunset. In other lands light has
pitched its merry tents. And if it never returned to its children, who would await its dawning with the innocence of faith?

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums, or the silence after lightning before it says its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon, long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head — that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone. The whole wide world pours down.