A Deo et Rege

I’ve always had a soft spot for the season of autumn. Living in Ohio most of my life, I was always treated with a spectacular show of colors that have been forever etched in my mind. It is not only the colors of autumn, but but the memories of jumping in leaves, picking pumpkins and gourds, drinking apple cider, watching football games, and many other recollections about the season that starts this year in less than a week.

I recently visited a website that described autumn as mother nature’s show. Of course, as a Catholic Christian, I believe that autumn is God’s show, a wonderful and brilliant demonstration of God’s creative and loving hand. As Catholics we don’t have to be ashamed or embarassed by nature, but can instead stand in awe and admire the beauty of the handiwork of God and the redemption of the material world by the Incarnation. Here is a lovely poem by Keats on autumn. As far as I can tell, it has entered into the public domain. I, or my brother, I can’t remember, took the photo two years ago.

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.