To Autumn

So many other bloggers (particularly South African bloggers living in Korea) are showing their appreciation of the awe inspiringly beautiful autumn foliage. The colours are so striking that one would believe them artificial, as one blogger suggested: “Die kleure is net doodeenvoudig ongelooflik en lyk soms onnatuurlik, so asof iemand oral plastiekblare ‘geplant’ het” [The colours are so unquestionably astounding and looks at times unnatural, as if somebody ‘planted’ plastic leafs everywhere]. Indeed, it looks like a staged scene for a fairytale. Pasted are some “fairytale” pictures I took on the campus where I live.

Autumn is definitely my favourite season, not only in Korea, but in South Africa as well. It might have something to do with the fact that I was born in autumn. Another South African blogger calls autumn a “halfweghuis” [halfway house], a place of recuperation after the summer and a time for preparation before the coming cold. I thought that a beautiful image.

A colleague recently, while both of us were admiring the beautiful colours, told me that she learned from autumn that death need not be ugly. In fact, death can be beautiful, as autumn is beautiful – the leaves are dying, but in their death they are changing into such inspiring colours. Quite a beautiful image too.

Yet another South African blogger, rather appropriately, started quoting poetry. Who better that the poets, and of all the poets the Romantics, to evoke the most striking autumn-images? My favourite is John Keats’ “To Autumn”:

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-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd 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'er-brimm'd 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-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd 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 cyder-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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Here are some links to autumn-themed photos I took last year:

• Autumn Self-Portrait
• A Room with a View
• Colourful Theology
• Autumn Colours
• (Natural) Christmas Tree