Quote of the Day (Helen Hunt Jackson, on October, ‘Lavish’ and ‘Scornful’)

“The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.”—American poet, fiction, and travel writer Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885), “October,” in Verses (1888), reprinted in The Pioneer Valley Reader, edited by James C. O’Connell (1995)

Quote of the Day (Robert Frost, on a ‘Hushed October Morning Mild’)

“O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief,
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), “October,” in A Boy’s Will (1913)
 
I took the image accompanying this post, of the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., 15 years ago this week, while vacationing in Boston and its environs.

Quote of the Day (V.S. Pritchett, on Happiness in a Late October Day)

“In the late part of that October there was dry weather and not a cloud in the sky for a fortnight. The kind of sky which had sat heavily upon the hills, the fields and the woods in the summer before Dunkley and the girl came to the house, had gone away like some big, yawning countrywoman; and what was left was space, fairer and taller in its blueness. Not only in the early frosted morning when Dunkley looked out after lighting the fire, but at noon and all through the day, they felt that they were stepping out of the house into the clear, prickling water of a spring. If they came out on the sunny side of the house and looked up into the sun’s face, the light striped and drenched them from head to foot, making their toes spread in their shoes; they thought they were standing under a silent and everlasting fountain. This silence of the month was a mark on everything. Even a labourer digging in the garden and bending up from his spade looked down to where the weald of small fields and small lodges met the hangers like a coast of a long vanished sea and said, ‘Isn’t that quiet?’”—English man of letters V.S. Pritchett (1900-1997), “A New World,” Granta, Issue 87 (Fall 2004)

Quote of the Day (Edward Thomas on October, ‘Warm to the Gaze’)

“The rich scene has grown fresh again and new

As Spring and to the touch is not more cool

Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might

As happy be as earth is beautiful,

Were I some other or with earth could turn

In alternation of violet and rose,

Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due,

And gorse that has no time not to be gay.”—Edward Thomas (1878-1917), from “October”

(Photo taken on a trip to Valley Forge National Historic Park, in eastern Pennsylvania, last October.)