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. ~George Eliot



Robert Bateman

"It is only her in large portions of Canada that wonderous second wind,
the Indian summer, attains its amplitude and heavenly perfection, -- the
temperatures; the sunny haze; the mellow, rich delicate, almost
flavoured air: Enough to live -- enough to merely be."
- Walt Whitman, Diary in Canada

"No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face."
- John Donne

"I built my cottage among the habitations of men,
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses.
You ask: "Sir, how can this be done?"
"A heart that is distant creates its own solitude."
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze afar towards the southern hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words."

- Tao Yuan Ming

"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content."|

- Lin Yutang

"When I speak
My lips feel cold -
The autumn wind."

- Basho

"yellow leaves
bright in the afternoon
by the pond"

- Tanaka, Kimiyo

"Unnoticed,
the passage has occurred;
as I brood,
autumn dusk
dewdrops fall on my pillow.

The voices of insects
and the deer by the fence,
as one,
disturb me to tears
this autumn dusk."

- Princess Shikishi, High Priestess of Kamo Shrine, 12th Century Japan

"In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfies
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
the grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all,
Flowers in the summer
Fires in the fall! "
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Autumn Fires