October Sweet

Come down, O love; may not our hands still meet,
Since still we live to-day, forgetting June,
Forgetting May, deeming October sweet –
– O hearken! through the afternoon,
The grey tower sings a strange old tinkling tune!
Sweet, sweet, and sad, the toiling year’s last breath,
Too satiate of life to strive with death.

And we too – will it not be soft and kind,
That rest from life, from patience and from pain;
That rest from bliss we know not when we find;
That rest from Love which ne’er the end can gain? –
– Hark, how the tune swells, that erewhile did wane!
Look up love! – ah, cling close and never move!
How can I have enough of life and love?

– William Morris
From “The Earthly Paradise”

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Photo of the Day – October 17, 2025
• October Vignettes (2024)
• October Vignettes (2023)
• October Afternoon
• An Autumn Walk Through the Neighborhood
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• Holding the Moment
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• Autumn’s “Wordless Message”
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• Season of the Soul
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – October 20, 2024
• The Autumn Garden (2024)
• The Autumn Garden (2022)
• Autumnal Thoughts and Visions (2022)
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2021)
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2016)
• Autumn Beauty (2015)
• Autumnal (and Rather Pagan) Thoughts on the Making of “All Things New”
• An Autumn Walk Along Minnehaha Creek
• Autumn Psalm
• Autumn Hues
• Autumn by the Creek
• From the River to the Falls
• Autumn Dance
• The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame!
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Time to Go Inwards
• To Dream, to Feel, to Listen

Images: Michael J. Bayly.