only spring and summer, but autumn also—as we have just seen in the case of Spenser. Thomson, however, has made Summer a youth, a sort of Apollo:
| “ | Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes |
| ......... | |
| He comes attended by the sultry hours, | |
| And ever fanning breezes on his way.” |
And his autumn also, “crowned with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,” scarcely looks like a female.
In climates still warmer than those of Greece and Rome, the ears of grain might correctly have been woven into the wreath of May. Ruth must have gleaned the fields of Boaz during the month of May, or some time between the Passover and Pentecost—festivals represented by our Easter and Whitsunday—for that was the harvest-time of Judea.
Many of the poets of our mother-speech have, however, followed the examples of Spenser and Thomson, in representing autumn as the season of the grain-harvest in England. Among others, Keats, who also gives a glowing picture of the season, in those verses, full of poetical images, beginning—
| “ | Season of mists, and mellow fruitfulness! |
| Close bosom friend of the maturing sun.” |
He then asks, “Who has not often seen thee
| “ | ..sitting careless on a granary floor, |
| Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; | |
| Or on a half-reaped furrow lain asleep, | |
| Drows'd with the fume of poppies; while thy hook | |
| Spares the next swathe, and all its twined flowers!” |
But while such poets as Spenser and Thomson give a warmer
