Autumn is a time of contemplation.
A time to reflect on the changing of the seasons from growth to decay.
Each year is a cycle of life that repeats.
Mother Nature bears the fruits of her labor, celebrating life in a festival of colour before the long winter months set in.
It's as if nature is reminding us that life is to be enjoyed, that there is so much to be grateful for, and that we can look forward to renewal again in the spring.
Artists through the centuries have been inspired by the beauty and melancholy of autumn.
Here are 40 beautiful paintings of the season of red and gold along with quotes from poets and writers.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, No longer blown hither and thither; The last lone aster is gone; The flowers of the witch-hazel wither; The heart is still aching to seek, But the feet question 'Whither?'
Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
The Sussex lanes were very lovely in the autumn . . . spendthrift gold and glory of the year-end . . . earth scents and the sky winds and all the magic of the countryside which is ordained for the healing of the soul.
There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Autumn Days Yellow, mellow, ripened days, Sheltered in a golden coating; O'er the dreamy, listless haze, White and dainty cloudlets floating; Winking at the blushing trees, And the sombre, furrowed fallow; Smiling at the airy ease, Of the southward flying swallow. Sweet and smiling are thy ways, Beauteous, golden Autumn days.
Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.
You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run
Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
All-cheering Plenty, with her flowing horn, Led yellow Autumn, wreath'd with nodding corn.
Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.
The goldenrod is yellow, The corn is turning brown... The trees in apple orchards With fruit are bending down.
The gold and scarlet leaves that littered the countryside in great drifts whispered and chuckled among themselves, or took experimental runs from place to place, rolling like coloured hoops among the trees.
The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
the fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light
Every season hath its pleasures; Spring may boast her flowery prime, Yet the vineyard's ruby treasures Brighten Autumn's sob'rer time.
In Heaven, it is always Autumn
Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the tints of autumn -- a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
.The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays
And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
