Thursday Extracts: On the way to winter

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

From : That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73) by William Shakespeare 

September

Yesterday I saw a leaf, just one, drift past me as I walked.

It fell to earth, still green, but dry-looking and slightly wrinkled.

An omen of autumn; for while the sun is still bright, it is low in the sky

And it has lost the heat of summer.

Sunday 160. Falling

This autumn seems confused: one minute it’s raining and blowing a gale; and the next there is golden sunshine and clear blue skies behind the yellowing leaves.

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160 characters (including spaces) to make the Monkey Man's day. Why not go and visit to see what others have done.

Thursday extracts. Keats's Autumnwatch

We did this as part of our O level course. (Age 16 exams - for my US readers) It's sort of haunted me ever since. Just pick a line - any line - and it oozes Autumn, like the cider-press, or the bees' clammy cells.

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Ode to Autumn

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-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

Posted automatically in absentia.

Sunday 160. Fall or autumn? Means the same.

They tell me that Autumn is a beautiful time of year. All the colour and the fresh, crisp mornings and rustling leaves. I guess it is – if you’re not a tree. 

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It's for the Monkey Man's Sunday 160 challenge.

Prepared in advance because I'm away from my computer right now. Not sure if I'll have web access so could someone please fill in the Linky for me? Thanks.

FFF55: September

September.
Look, how did it get to be September?
It can’t be September just yet.
I know the year started and went through a series of eight other months and it probably did it a day at a time
(like a good year should – take everything a day at a time)
But where was I?

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FFF55 is a weekly challenge run by the G-Man. Go and see what others have to offer this Friday.