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The Autumn and the Fall of Leaves
Whatever permanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most insistent and most loud at such times. There are still places where one can feel and describe the spirit of the falling of leaves.
At Fall, the sky which is of so delicate and faint a blue as to contain something of gentle mockery, and certain more of tenderness, presides at the fall of leaves. There is no air, no breath at all. The leaves are so light that they sidle on their going downward, hesitating in that which is not void to them, and touching at last so intangible to the earth with which they are to merge, that the gesture is much gentler than a greeting, and even more discreet than a discreet touch. They make a little sound, less than the least of sounds. No bird at night in the marshes rustles so slightly, no men, though men are the most refined of living beings, put so passing a stress upon their sacred whispers or their prayers. The leaves are hardly heard, but they are heard just so much that men also, who are destined at the end to grow glorious and to die, look up and hear them falling.
There is an infinite amount of qualities of describing the leaves. The color is not a mere glory: it is intricate. If you take up one leaf, then you can see the sharp edge boundaries which are stained with a deep yellow-gold and are not defined. Nor do shape and definition ever begin to exhaust the list. For there are softness and hardness too. Beside boundaries you have hues and tints, shades also, varying thicknesses of stuff, and endless choice of surface, and that list also is infinite, and the divisions of each item in it are everywhere the depth and the meaning of so much creation are beyond our powers. All this happens to be true of but one dead leaf; and yet every dead leaf will differ from its fellow.
It is no wonder, then, that at this peculiar time, this week (or moment) of the year, the desires which if they do not prove at least demand---perhaps remember--- our destiny, come strongest. They are proper to the time of autumn, and all men feel them. The air is at once new and old; the morning (if one rises early enough to welcome its leisurely advance) contains something in it of profound remembrance. The evenings hardly yet suggest (as they soon will) friends and security, and the fires of home. The thoughts awakened in us by their bands of light fading along the downs are thoughts which go with loneliness and prepare us for the isolation of the soul. It is on this account that tradition has set, at the entering of autumn, for a watch at the gate of the season and at its close of day and the night of on which the dead return.
