Originally published at National Catholic Register
Autumn’s colors may dazzle, but its deeper message is one of mortality and spiritual preparation. Are you ready for your final fall?
Fall is a season beloved by many. It is often celebrated in our literature, notwithstanding Henry David Thoreau’s claims (in Autumnal Tints) that the season “has not made a deep impression on our own literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.” He still thinks it’s made a deeper impression in America than in England, “because the trees acquire but few bright colors there.” Considering that the man’s wanderings abroad were limited to Québec what can one say except that, like in most things, the pond dweller of Concord was wrong.
I recently ran across an autumn poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, one of America’s 19th-century “Fireside Poets.” He’s unfortunately neglected today, in part because literary critics have decided no American poetry worth reading was written before Walt Whitman, in part because ordinary 19th-century literary vocabulary largely challenges even today’s collegian.
In “Autumn Thoughts” Whittier conducts a dialogue with “Earth.” Comparing the changing of the seasons to his own life, he tells Earth “an emblem of myself thou art.” Earth dissents, for while the world’s time seems
