Page:Excursions (1863) Thoreau.djvu/223

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AUTUMNAL TINTS.

[1862.]

Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most that Thomson says on this subject in his "Autumn" is contained in the lines,—

"But see the fading many-colored woods,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown ; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue, from wan declining green to sooty dark":—

and in the line in which he speaks of

"Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods."

The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our own literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.

A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this, the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I