Beauty for Ashes

"It would be idle to deny that there is in autumn - the fall of the year - an irrepressible note of decadence; it is echoed in a whisper by the rustle of falling leaves. Beneficent in their life, for all the plant’s wealth is due to them, they are beautiful in their dying. They have worked themselves out, for it is hardly a metaphor to speak of the industry of the leaf; supplies are running short, the sun’s rays are fewer, the first shock of frost has come, and the leaves must die. But before they die they surrender to the plant all that they have still left that is worth having. There is a retreat of particles down the leaf-stalk into the stem. Thus the leaves fall virtually dead, almost empty except of waste. They are like empty houses from which the tenants have flitted, breaking, and burning some of the furnishings as they went, leaving little more than ashes on the hearth. But nature is ever generous of beauty, for the dying leaves have a literal ‘beauty for ashes.’ [...] Climb the hill above the village, and watch the sun set over the withering woods. Look out over the sea of gold, mingled with fire, and broken by dark rocks which you know to be pines. Accept the withering but see also the harvest-fields; even on the bare boughs there are buds. Hear the birds pass overhead, quite a Babel of good-byes, but many at least will return. Watch the seeds drift off the dead plants as the wind sighs along the hillside, and know that the race continues. Look death in the face, and see that he is kindly and wise. Wait till the cows are driven home lowing, till the sheep are herded off the exposed moorland, till the colors pale in the brief twilight, till the birds that remain cease to sing, till the lamps are lit in the cottage windows. Wait on till the curfew tolls, till the lights are put out one by one, - then know the rest and silence of autumn."

- J. Arthur Thomson (1861 - 1933)