The late afternoon is cold and quiet. I regret the shorter day and the need to leave the great air so soon. But underneath lowering clouds is a growing gap of swirling orange toward the west. As the light recedes around us, the sunset begins to show the power and surge of pattern in the sky. Coils and whips of gold at first--bold, bright, far away. Then spun gold behind dark barriers--the ribs of whales, giant minnows, plumes tinted with salmon, the curving timbers of ships, and all things rare and imaginary plunging through an oceanic fire. Also I see golden October going, in fields of last excitement. But what this and many other sunsets say is “Come on!” However you use your days and nights, in speed or muddled preoccupations, come. It will be too late soon for the feast that is now, whose fires are always carrying over to the other side of the world. _November_ _The Seed in the Season_ The glory goes, and there comes the first sudden plucking out of dead leaves. They scud and sail. They lift and fall to the ground, where they sometimes scuttle unexpectedly like mice. November rolls into view with cool, solemn, formal consistency. When it rains they say: “I’m glad it’s not that white stuff,” although Cape Cod is not noted for its snow. There is no deep and heavy frost as yet, no northeast gales driving wet flakes at our eyes. A number of Cape Codders migrate to Florida for the winter. Daylight diminishes. As the leaves drop off we begin to see more distinctly between the trees. I find two spotted turtles moving very slowly through the waters of a ditch at one side of an abandoned cranberry bog. In one open field there are a few red-legged grasshoppers, much less active than a few weeks before. An occasional cricket, grasshopper, or spider is spotted and animated by the rays of the sun when it bursts through drifting clouds. Here and there a violet aster or late goldenrod stands in bloom between innumerable plants that are fuzzy with seed. The milkweed still sends crowds of little silk parachutes shining on the wind. We are now in a genuine country state of which the urban power talks with both scorn and ignorant nostalgia. The summer no longer pounds at our temples. The fall color is gone. There is nothing to look at, and very little to hear except the wind, or a plane in the distance, a car on the highway. To a city lover it is silent and deadly dull.