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Plough, fence, and store
aught else before;
Trench hedge and furrow that water may through.
Mix rye aright with wheat that is white;
See corn sown in, too thick nor too thin;
Green rye have some, ere Michaelmas come.
Geld bulls and rams, sew ponds, amend dams;
Put boar in stye till Hallontide nigh;
Go gather up mast ere time be past; mast fats up swine.
Fruit gather, grapes pull, for fear of drabs go gather thy crabs;
Pluck fruit to last when Michael is past;
Forget it not, fruit bruised will rot,
Light ladder and long, doth trees least wrong,
Go gather will skill, and gather that will.
Set strawberries, wife, I love them for life.
Good dwelling give bee or else goes she,
Drive hive, good Coney, for wax and for honey.
...
At Michaelmas safely, go stye up the boar,
Lest straying abroad, ye do see him no more:
The sooner, the better for Hallontide nigh,
And better be brawneth, if hard he do lie.
Tusser, Thomas
(1524 - 1580), Five
hundreth pointes of good husbandrie: as well for the champion or open
countrie, as also for the woodland or severall ; mixed in everie month
with huswiferie, over and besides the booke of huswiferie, London:
'Printed in the now dwelling house of Henrie Denham in Aldersgate Street
at the signe of the starre', 1586
At some
moment in September when there is an intimation of fall – perhaps a
certain slant of light across the browning meadow in the hush of a late
afternoon when the wind from the sea has suddenly died – I think of
the fiercely independent ruffed grouse, a game bird without peer.
Nelson Bryant; ‘Grouse Hunting Has Its Ritual’, September 27,
1984
In such a
day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set
round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so
fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies
on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come
and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack,
whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually
repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh; a mirror in
which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the
sun’s hazy brush, – this the light-dust cloth, – which retains no
breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high
above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), US philosopher, author, naturalist; Walden,
1854
Thus was my
first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was
similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.
Henry David Thoreau; Walden,
1854
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
Up from the
meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), US poet
Thirty dayes
hath Nouember,
Aprill, June, and September,
February hath xxviii alone,
And all the rest have xxxi.
Richard Grafton; Chronicles of England, 1590
Half-opening
her lips to the frost’s morning sigh, how strangely the rose has
smiled on a swift-fleeting day of September!
How audacious it is to advance in stately manner before the blue-tit
fluttering in the shrubs that have long lost their leaves, like a queen
with the spring’s greeting on her lips;
to bloom with steadfast hope that, parted from the cold flower-bed, she
may be the last to cling, intoxicated, to a young hostess’s breast.
Afanasi Fet (1820 - 1892), Russian poet; ‘The September Rose’,
(1890), trans. by Dimitri Obolensky (1965)
At it in its
familiar twang: “My friend,
Cut your own throat. Cut your own throat. Now! Now!”
September twenty-second, Sir, the bough
Cracks with the unpicked apples, and at dawn
The small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.
Robert Lowell (1917 - 1977), US poet; ‘After the Surprising
Conversions’
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
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.
Rowland E Robinson, American naturalist and writer; ‘September
Days’
The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel –
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.
John
Updike; 'September'
I bear the Scales, where hang in equipoise
The night and day; and when unto my lips
I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise
Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships;
The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips;
Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight;
The hedges are all red with haws and hips,
The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.
HW
Longfellow (1807
- '82);
The Poet's Calendar for
September
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As touching upon your Fallings, which
are those Apples which fall from your trees, either through too much
ripeness or else through the violence of wind, you shall by no means mix
or match them with your gathered apples: for those Fallings must
necessarily shrink, wither and grow rivelled the sooner, so that your
best course is to spend them presently, with all speed possible.
Gervase Markham (1568 - 1636); The English Husbandman, 1635
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’
The
golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bearing down.
The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.
From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.
Helen Hunt Jackson; ‘September’
Harvest-home. harvest-home.
We have ploughed, we have sowed,
We have reaped, we have mowed,
We have brought home every load,
Hip, hip, hip, harvest-home!
Song from the Feast of the
Ingathering (September
24)
Come, ye thankful people come,
Raise the song of harvest-home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
H Alford; ‘Harvest
Hymn’
The feast is such
as earth, the general mother,
Pours from her
fairest bosom, when she smiles
In the embrace of
Autumn. To each other
As some fond
parent fondly reconciles
Her warring
children, she their wrath beguiles
With their own
sustenance; they, relenting, weep.
Such is this
festival, which from their isles,
And continents,
and winds, and oceans deep,
All shapes may throng to share, that
fly, or walk, or creep.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet; ‘The Revolt of Islam’
'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
By
all these lovely tokens
September
days are here
With
summer's best of weather
And
autumn's best of cheer.
Author Unknown
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
On the third
Tuesday of every September, floodgates are opened in a tall building on
the East River in New York and a Niagara of rhetoric gushes forth for
three months.
Anthony Parsons on the UN; ‘Waffles But Still Worthwhile’, London
Times, October
6, 1979
April is in
my mistress’ face,
And July in her eyes hath place,
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.
Author unknown; Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, Oxford
University Press, 1932
I am renewed
by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.
Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963), US poet; The Far Field
September: it was the most beautiful
of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and
regret.
Alexander Theroux, US novelist, poet, essayist; Darconville’s
Cat, ch. 2, Doubleday, New York, 1981
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
If it be fair on the first day of
September, it will remain so at least to the beginning of October.
Traditional British weather saying
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
September
means-
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
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