Autumn: The Season of Harvest, Reflection, and Thanksgiving

Introduction: Autumn as the Season of Poets and Spirits

What is it that makes autumn so special? Perhaps it is that autumn is the season of poets. Keats wrote his ode "To Autumn," describing it as the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." Hopkins penned "Spring and Fall," with all the emphasis on the latter as he addressed the young girl to whom the poem was dedicated:

"Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?"

Hopkins gently chided Margaret, convinced that she was not so much mourning the falling of the leaves as she was mourning her own fallen nature and the debt that she—like all—must inevitably pay. Though, of course, what could she know of this, being only a child? Hopkins, like a cold autumnal cloud, poured cold water over the girl's feelings while not refraining from a certain sneer. To prove what? That man is meant to grieve? And what better time to grieve than when nature itself seems in the very throes of its final hours, offering a flash of terminal lucidity?

But then again, that is autumn. Autumn is like a ghost calling an end to summer's swells, to paraphrase Keats. It is the end of the dance—yet not the end of the dance. There is still light left, but the sun is in its descent. The sky is orange and purpling. The warmth of the day is giving place to a slight nipping breeze. And what awaits? Something on the other side? Autumn is the season of spirits. All Hallows' Eve, followed by the Feast of All Saints, followed by the Feast of All Souls (Newland, 1999): prayers for the dead, prayers for the poor souls in purgatory, feasting and praying, fasting and mourning.

Autumn is the season of cemeteries. Yet it does not leave one there. It is also a season of hunkering down, of gathering and storing and getting ready for the long winter months ahead. Autumn is a season for thinking on the end of things—but it is not the end of things itself.

But what is it about the season of autumn that turns one's thoughts to the end of things? Is it the yellow-browns, the crisp chill in the air that foreshadows the cold snap of winter? Yet fall is full of life, too: outdoor walks, football at the local high school, raking leaves into piles in the yard, trick-or-treating with friends, Thanksgiving with family, romantic rides in the countryside to see the changing colors of the foliage—all of these represent some of life's most memorable moments.

What Autumn Does to the Mind and Mood

Perhaps that is why autumn is so often linked with reflection. Autumn causes the mind to stop and pause, to look back while also musing on what lies ahead. There is a wistfulness about autumn—something at once youthful and old. No other season has such an effect on the mind and mood. Spring does not achieve it, with its newness and buds and blossoms. Summer has a kind of torpid dullness intermixed with a frenzied state of action. Winter is encased in glass and icy gloom, coupled with moments of dazzle and delight. Autumn alone stands out as soulful and eloquent—touching upon something significant, something haunting.

"Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why."

So says Hopkins. But one need not limit oneself only to his perspective.

Autumn is the season of harvests. The fruit is taken from the fields. The trees give up their yield, and that which cannot be carried off in baskets is left behind to rot and give itself back to the earth.

The Harvest and the Meditation on Mortality

The fullness of time has come. There is no more to give. Things are called home. Man himself thinks on his other home—his home on the other side. He thinks on the Grim Reaper, who collects souls in his own basket and ferries them across. He thinks on his own life and wonders: Have I done enough? Will it be enough? Will it do?

Shakespeare himself used the season of autumn to describe his own mind's unease about any seeming permanence, any attachment to the things of this world:

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."

Yet he did not despair—though he knew full well that love must leave the things it loves in this life, in this world, to go before the source of all life and love in the next. The ultimate harvest is that one.