Thursday
Here’s a lovely Helen Hunt Jackson poem to usher in the first day of September. Jackson, an exact contemporary of Emily Dickinson, hits all the right notes in describing the season, including the way September stands at the intersection of summer and fall. As Jackson puts it, “With summer’s best of weather,/ And autumn’s best of cheer.”
After having captured the loveliness of the month, however, Jackson then takes a further step and says that it brings about something even lovelier: “a thing which I remember.” We aren’t told what this thing is. It’s a secret that the poet leaves up to our imagination.
September
By Helen Hunt Jackson
The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.
The gentian’s bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.
From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes’ sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather,
And autumn’s best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
‘T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.