NPM: #6–of Hardy’s leaves
Where They Lived
Thomas Hardy, 1840 – 1928
Dishevelled leaves creep down
Upon that bank to-day,
Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown;
The wet bents bob and sway;
The once warm slippery turf is sodden
Where we laughingly sat or lay.
The summerhouse is gone,
Leaving a weedy space;
The bushes that veiled it once have grown.
Gaunt trees that interlace,
Through whose lank limbs I see too clearly
The nakedness of the place.
And where were hills of blue,
Blind drifts of vapour blow,
And the names of former dwellers few,
If any, people know,
And instead of a voice that called, “Come in, Dears,”
Time calls, “Pass below!”
As I get older, I realize autumn is replacing my favorite season of summer. The warmth is still there, the greens fading into muted colors–there is a peace, a tranquility to fall versus the frantic heat and activity summer requires. I think Hardy realized this as well.
image: RevWarheart/Morguefile
Pam Webb 
Each year I pick the bones from
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
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.
Or contrarywise:-
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
But when you come right down to it it’s:-
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
Thanks!
Shakespeare, Eliot and Wordsworth