Nearing Summer's End

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.  

My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music.  

It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.  

~Violette Leduc

"Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year... 

it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul."

~ Reverend Billy Graham

 
This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer  
where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, 

through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy 

for those who droop with August heat, 

puts her cool cloak of bracing air 

about leaf and flower and human shoulders. 

~ Sarah Orne Jewett, The Courting of Sister Wisby, 1887