Let Fall No Leaf

This is my favorite time of year - a time when late summer flowers are still blossoming and leaves are changing but have not yet fallen - maximum color! This picture doesn't do it justice (clicking to enlarge may help a bit), but yesterday during the first rain of the season, which augmented the color, I sat on my back patio and enjoyed the purple of the hibiscus, the red of the lilies, the yellow of the roses, and the multihues of leaves just beginning to turn.


O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this:
Here such passion is
As stretcheth me apart, —Lord, I do fear

Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, —let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

(God's World by Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892-1950)