The summer leaves have spent their singing green,
The upland meadows lie all harvested,
where the sweet phlox and marigold have been,
A late and lonely larkspur lifts her head.
This is the hour that sadly speaks of change,
And when the heart beats lowly in the night,
When morning ebbs in mist, and noon is strange,
And the bright birds describe their southward flight.

Brief days draw in a scanter measure of hours,
While we, with love's own season still unspent,
Walk alien through a world of shattered flowers,
And hear dark presage in the wind's lament.

Let us believe that love alone can be
Endowed with summer for eternity.

    Teatime comes early at Stillmeadow now. I hang the kettle over the embers, bring out the toasting fork, and open the sweet - clover honey. If you had the right plug-in, you would be hearing nice music now.

    In November the Stillmeadow road has done with gold and scarlet. But the sunny stillness and the haze that dreams over the woods tell me that Indian Summer has come. The Old Farmer's Almanac dares to set dates for its arrival and departure - November 13 - 20 - but nature has her own schedule. Whenever it comes, though, the dogs and I bask in the balmy air, feeling just plain lazy, thinking all kinds of reasons to put off the chores that await me. Perhaps Indian Summer is the opposite of Spring Fever!

     When the air is blue with haze and smells of woodsmoke and the sun is gentle and dreamy; I sit on the terrace by the old well house and read, turning the pages slowly and most of the time just sitting.
         There isn't really any such thing as summer reading, I think, or winter reading; there is just reading. But I do think some poetry belongs especially to Indian Summer. I've been browsing through Robert Frost's Collected Poems, and what a delight it is. He was the great countryman poet, and this book should be in every household, well worn, as mine is. My Rupert Brooke is also worn and shabby, the pages are yellowing, and there is a good deal of underlining in it. Lines like

My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days

Or :

And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon. . . . .

    Now I don't really believe moths actually drink flowers - it certainly doesn't fit in with what I know of the moths I have met - but it is such pure beauty that it doesn't matter at all. It evokes magic.

    Poetry should be shared, and I am sorry that reading aloud is so out of fashion nowadays. the very few friends I have that voluntarily ask me to read some poetry aloud are rarer than a narcissus in a snowbank. When I was young, I went around with a book of verse under my arm and just collared hapless classmates and read to them, but one cannot do that when one is an adult!

Stillmeadow Calendar

     Sometimes I go away by myself, up the hill, far enough from Stillmeadow so that I only see the slope of the roof almost lambent with sunset. honey may pad along with me, for she does not disturb the aloneness; after all, honey is only me, in golden fur and with amber eyes.

    From the upper abandoned orchard the yard is partly visible, dotted comfortably with cockers and cats, and if the weather is right, Jill's bent shoulders appear at the end of the tomato vines. If there are guests, and there usually are, the sound of their voices comes dreamily from the open space where the lawn furniture is.

    If Cicely is home there is music, too, the sweet nostalgic sound of "Borrachita" or the one about the Aztecs coming down from the great white mountains to be slaves. Don is never visible to the naked eye, for he finds the best way to get through all the murder mysteries is to keep out of sight. Too many errands may turn up.

    Dorothy and her new and charming husband, Val, will be working on their car; just married, the excitement of being together pitches their voices high and sweet. They bought a car named Carrie for a hundred and twenty - five dollars when they were married, and Dorothy says she spent her entire honeymoon in junk yards while Val tried to replace broken parts.

   Walking down the country road this morning, I noticed the swamp in late fall has lovely colors. The chalky purple of the wild blackberry canes, the cinnabar of frosted weeds, and the garnet of oak seedlings seem like music. Farther on, the cut - over fields have variations on the theme of brown, from tawny to copper. Squirrels go a -marketing under the hazel bushes, for under the burs the satiny brown nuts begin to show. A fawn colored rabbit hops ahead along the grey stone wall, and a pheasant leads three females toward the thicket.
     As I pass the neighbor's old red barn the smell of dried hay is as sweet as honey. Pumpkins and cabbages and smoky hubbard squash lie in the garden. Blue smoke rises from a pile of burning cornstalks. "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," Keats called it, and also "Think not of spring, thou has thy beauty too."

    It is a quiet beauty, and the rhythm of November is a quiet one. Nature and man seem to me to be gathering strength for the long cold. In the village women are putting harvest decorations on the front doors, a sheaf of corn, gourds, evergreen branches. This custom surely goes back to the days of ancient Greece when the harvest festivals were held. We no longer wear garlands and wreaths but we wreath our doors. Many front stoops have also pumpkins and squash on each side of the door, a symbol of a bountiful season. We learned to keep an eye on the pumpkins, for once a severe freeze came unexpectedly and the next morning when we opened the door,  the pumpkins exploded.

The dogs are enchanted. Holly races around and around the house, her flying Irish paws skim over the leaves, barely stirring them. Her face has a rapt look, her tail is a windy flag.
    Teddy manfully paws her, golden cocker ears gathering bits of leaves. They play a definite game, with rules. When she gets too far ahead of him, she reverses the field and dives toward him. He scuttles around the house. When she catches him, she nips up one of his ears and tugs him along. The older cockers look on this as childish and silly. If the game comes too near, a sudden snap of jaws or a growl warns the players to mind their own business and not disturb people.

    After Teddy gives up and just sits down, tongue out, holly makes a final whirl and then sits with him. They always sit facing the same way and Teddy tried to sit like an Irish, which is straight as a die, when naturally he would sit with one hip sidewise, as most cockers do. The tall elegant Irish and the compact golden cocker look beautiful to me, especially when the wind ruffles Teddy's ears and drifts the leaves around Holly's plume of a tail. (Since this is the only tail on the place, we have to remember not to shut a door too quickly and nip it.)

    Generally dogs "settle down" when they are fully mature and give up flinging themselves about unless there is something important that needs chasing, but the Irish has the heart of a child always. I once asked a friend when Holly would settle down, and he said his Irish showed faint signs of it at the age of eight, but very faint.

Stillmeadow Sampler

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