The harvesters of grain and grass have gone, and the tinted stubble is full of crickets and monotonous cicadas. Now the crumbling furrow is folded back behind the plow and corn knives are swinging close to the solemn pumpkins, for in cornfield, vineyard, and orchard and in the squirrel’s domain the last harvests of all are hastening to ripeness as the sunset chill gives warning of a disaster foretold since August by the katydid. The honey-colored pippins, cracked and mellow in the brooding heat, encounter the windfalls of October’s trees—deepening red, soft yellow, and polished green. Great, sheltering leaves are dropping from the burdened vine. Every breath tells of fruits, drying herbs, and the late flowers that in deserted gardens are most pungent in September—marigolds, tansy, and the cinnamon pink. Pennyroyal and mint are betrayed. Thorn apples, not near ripened, are knocked from the twig by south-bound birds. Still, among wine-colored and vermilion foliage, the acorn is green, though flushed wintergreen berry and red-gemmed partridge vine proclaim autumn along the forest floor. The auburn splendors are upon the sumac and the burning-bush of old-fashioned dooryards, where, too, the smoke tree holds its haze of seeds. Sometimes a gentian stands erect among dead grasses—a slim señora with a fringed mantilla swirled close about her shoulders in the chilly dusk. The closed gentian keeps its darkly impenetrable blue beside the pink-tipped companion stalks of the snake’s-head. Fair are the sheathed berries of the prickly ash—but daggers to the taste. Often they grow among wild cherries, which, juiceless now, are sweet as dried fruits from Persia. And there are the black nannyberries with their watermelon flavor, and the first spicy wild grapes. Immortelles are bleached paper white on sandy hills. The nightshade holds berries of three colors, passing from brilliant green to clouded amber and deep crimson lake, and still upon it hangs the mysterious blue blossom, shunned. Dogwood boughs are gorgeous as a sunset, and the thick scarlet clusters droop from the mountain ash. The last humming birds haunt tanned honeysuckles. Languid, but clinging yet to the sun world, the yellow lily dies on weedy streams. If the all-conquering goldenrod hangs the way for summer’s passing with the color of regret, it has made every meadow El Dorado with its plumes, sprays, clumps, and spears. Spray upon delicate spray, the fairy lavender aster has taken possession of the roadsides and fields, and before it, far into the shade, goes the white wood aster, mingling with the flamboyant leaves of dwarf oaks and the glistening red seeds of the wild turnip. To make September’s pageant the scented, pale petals of spring, the drowsy contentedness of summer’s fulfillment and the Tyrian dyes of fall are joined.