Quote of the Day (William Dean Howells, on November)

“How often, in how many a far November,
Of childhood and my children's childhood I was glad,
With the wild rapture of the Fall,
Of all the beauty, and of all
The ruin, now so intolerably sad.”—American man of letters William Dean Howells (1837-1920), “November,” originally printed in Stops of Various Quills (1895), republished in American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2: Herman Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals, edited by John Hollander (1993)

I took the image accompanying this post, of the Smithsonian Butterfield Habitat Garden, outside the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, when I was on vacation in Washington, DC, nine years ago this month.