Is Not This a True Autumn Day

by George Eliot

Is not this a true autumn day?
Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonize.
The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.
Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

 

Note: Today is the 200th birthday of the English Victorian author George Eliot, who was born on this day in 1819.

George Eliot was the pen name for a woman named Mary Ann Evans, and her many works like Silas Marner and Middlemarch are packed with images from the garden.

To Mary Ann, plants were the perfect representation of faith - both required care and feeding to grow and flourish.

Today's post features a letter Mary Ann wrote to her old governess, Maria Lewis, on October 1st, 1841.


As featured on
The Daily Gardener podcast:

Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest, most beautiful words of all.
George Eliot
George Eliot

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