Autumn and Harvest, by Grace Wells
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What emotions does the poet associate with the arrival of autumn?
I once wrote a poem which begins It is Autumn Again and I'm not ready I don't suppose I shall ever be ready for autumn. I love summer and never want it to end and But how can anyone be churlish in this season of harvest? Right now my garden is full of peas, beans, and glassy wine berries, and the hedgerows around my house are dense with blackberries and slows turning purple. When I was a child there was a harvest festival in our church each September. Up by the altar a table stood laden with a sheath of corn, gigantic carrots, enormous marrows, baskets of plums, pyramids of green apples, and innumerable jars of jam. To my childish thinking there was something wonderful about that sight. But even then it confused me.
Why does the speaker feel both abundance and melancholy at the end of summer?
How could there be such plenty in the midst of my sadness at summer's end? Our gentle slide toward winter begins with laden orchards, vegetable gardens teeming with produce, and hedgerows dense with nuts and berries. Yet all that abundance is touched by a poignancy that leaves me wondering what harvest and autumn mean. Not the words and their origins, but what harvest and Harvest and autumn mean to me now, this year, at this time in my life. In the yard in front of my house there's a horse chestnut tree. I've come to think of that tree as a clock of summer, announcing arrival with a fanfare of white flowers in May. And then, by the slow, steady growth of the tiny green chestnuts, the tree becomes a time piece, so that I only have to look at their size, minute, larger, large, to know how the months of summer are passing, slowly drawing their circle through the tree's trunk, marking another year of its life and
In September, like a clock chiming its hour, the chestnuts fall, announcing summer's end of the
How does the horse‑chestnut tree serve as a seasonal clock and symbol of loss?
And it seems there's some lesson here, some clue as to what autumn means with its abundance, tied tight to a feeling of loss. What did you harvest this summer, I want to ask myself. What faint circle have those summer months drawn in the grain of your bone? And at that thought I scatter with memories. Days of sunlight and rain. Days of health and happiness taken for granted, too many things to remember. But as I look through my harvest, one memory stands out. I had two Canadian visitors to stay, two teachers who live in a remote Inuit village in the far north. They brought me the news that the polar bears have grown skinny because the seals no longer have ice flows to rest on, and the bears can't hunt without them.
What climate‑related news do the Canadian visitors bring, and how does it affect the speaker’s harvest?
They brought me the news that the elders have never seen so many icebergs floating south. Unsure what to do with this information, I take its strange harvest to the September hedgerose. I gather rose hips to make tea, elderberries for a winter tonic, hawthorn to ease my heart. In my pockets I collect crab apples, hazelnuts, and beech casings like soft gold stars. I'm soothed by the shape. of shapes and colours, by the bright red of Rowans, by the pink and orange of spindleberries, the smoky blues and purples of Slough and Damson. Some of Ireland's hedgerows are remnants of the ancient woods that once covered this island, but most date from the enclosure acts of the eighteen hundreds when the fields were first hedged in.
Since then those hedges have become the lungs of the country. The equivalent of Ireland's rainforest.
Why are Ireland’s hedgerows described as a rainforest and what threats do they face?
Innumerable insects, birds, butterflies, and mammals depend on them. And yet they too are a fragile environment, vulnerable to economics. In the years of the Celtic tiger, Ireland lost two thousand miles of hedgerow. Where, I ask myself, did all their species go? It is September. Another ring settles in the trunk of my chestnut tree, settles through my bone. My pockets are full of rose hips, hawthorn berries, and crab apples, and they soothe me. They tell me this is the nature of summer's end.
It is the season that asks us to love the beauty of the world, to love nature's great display. To love all that perishes. All that does not last is
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What emotions does the poet associate with the arrival of autumn?
0:00–0:51
2
Why does the speaker feel both abundance and melancholy at the end of summer?
0:51–2:02
3
How does the horse‑chestnut tree serve as a seasonal clock and symbol of loss?
2:02–2:52
4
What climate‑related news do the Canadian visitors bring, and how does it affect the speaker’s harvest?
2:52–3:51
5
Why are Ireland’s hedgerows described as a rainforest and what threats do they face?
3:51–4:45