There’s a certain slant of light . . . not quite the same slant of light Dickinson made famous, the somber light of winter afternoons and cathedral tunes—but a light that lets you know fall is on its way. I’ve been noticing it during the past week or so, and with the beautiful, hazy late summer days, this poem by Marguerite Easter, one of the WLCB’s more accomplished poets, keeps coming to mind. That put it in my mind to share with you. Enjoy summer while it lasts. Fall is a-comin’.

Summer’s-Farewells (1892)
Marguerite Easter

(Local name in Virginia for late wild-wood flowers of Aster genus.)

Unto the complaining woods suddenly they came, 
To the fields so desolate but the day before,
To the unsmiling paths and to the hills that wore 
Such sullen looks; there was no further need to blame 
Nature’s improvidence, for lo, where pin oaks flame,
And large leafed yellow hickories sprout with more 
Than Spring’s abundance seemingly, they bloomed o’er
Her lately bereaved breast. I asked their name—

That suddenly to wood and path and meadow came—
And that on warm upland slopes were white in hue, 
But in hollows, where I had thought but shadows grew,
Were purple-petaled, with calyxes the same
As ragged-robins have, and stamens that became 
Golden or red, as by chance of birth they knew
Of sunlit clearings, or of depths where pines renew 
Themselves perpetually. I asked their name.

“‘Summer’s-farewells,’ we call them here.” Summer’s­ farewells!
They are the final gift of sentiment to sight.
O certainly, the earth should be contented quite
To be remembered so.— “We call them here ‘Farewells.’”
O love, I am the field, the wood, the path, the hill 
Before these come. Alas, I bide thy coming still—

Who have been gone so long, so long. E’en summer days 
Send back greeting to the earth they loved of late,
But thou abidest in silence, and I must await
Thy recognition. Hateful clime! whose woodland ways 
No Summer’s-farewells have;—I am that clime that stays
Wrapt in November’s loneliness, my woods debate
Their dolor, my falling leaves deplore their fate,—
There are no Summer’s-farewells to my Autumn days.

“‘Summer’s-farewells,’ we call them here.” Summer’s­ farewells!
They are the final gift of sentiment to sight.
O certainly, the earth should be contented quite
To be remembered so.— “We call them here ‘Farewells.’”
O love, I am the field, the wood, the path, the hill 
Before these came. Alas, I bide thy coming still.