Source for this image here.
It's been more than a week since I walked through the park. Today when I walked with Papa Bear to pick up his lift to work, I was amazed at how much the scenery has changed in such a short time. The trees are shedding their leaves quickly now and the colours are beautiful - red, yellow, gold, orange. It feels very peaceful walking along and watching the leaves as they drift gently to the ground. Although it wasn't cold, it was very damp and gloomy and misty, and I was minded that just next week, it will be November! The cubs are having a small autumn party with some college and Church friends which we are planning for at the moment, and I also realised that just this weekend, the clocks will be going back. I'm always glad when this happens - it means that Papa Bear's working day is shorter, and he gets home to me for the evening much earlier!
Here is a poem by the Scottish poet James Thomson that I found, which I think describes the scenery we saw this morning. It is called "Mists In Autumn" -
Now, by the cool, declining year condescend,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd,
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime,
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides,
And high between contending kingdoms rears
The rocky long division, fills the view
With great variety; but in a night
Of gath'ring vapour from the baffled sense
Sinks dark and dreary; thence expanding far,
The huge dusk gradual swallows up the plain:
Vanish the woods; the dim-seen river seems
Sullen and slow to roll the misty wave.
Ev'n in the height of noon, oppress'd, the sun
Sheds weak and blunt his wide-refracted ray,
Whence glaring oft with many a broaden'd orb
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life
Objects appear, and, wilder'd o'er the waste,
The shepherd stalks gigantic: till at last,
Wreath'd dun around in deeper circles, still
Successive closing, sits the gen'ral fog
Unbounded o'er the world, and, mingling thick,
A formless gray confusion covers all.
