For the moors autumn is the spring come back
in purple, and in golden woods and many another place where the year
dies happily, she smiles like a widow so young and fair that one thinks
rather of life than death in her presence.
But in the valley Autumn was a fearsome hag, a little crazy, two-double,
gathering sticks in a scarlet cloak. When she turned her wicked old eyes
upon you, the life died within you, and wherever you walked she was
always somewhere in the bushes muttering evil spells. All the year
round under the green cloud of summer, you might meet Autumn creeping
somewhere in the valley, like foul mists that creep from pool to pool;
for here all the year was decay to feed upon and dead leaves for her to
sleep on. Always the year round in the valley, if you listened close,
you would hear something sighing, something dying. To the happiest
walking there would come strange sinkings of the heart, unaccountable
premonitions of overhanging doom. There the least superstitious would
start at the sight of a toad, and come upon three magpies at once not
without fear. Over all was a breath of imminent disaster, a look of
sorrow from which there was no escape.
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