A Place of Time and Change

At Day-Close in November

The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird flies across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
A time when none will be seen. 

-Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

The time has arrived for us to turn the clocks back an hour.  We have manipulated time so as to have a longer day from March 12 to November 5, but, alas, the time for extended darkness has returned.

Seasonal signs of change are all around us at Merry Mount, and it is time once again for the Earth to rest.  The gardens must be put away. Melancholy.  The vast fields that surround us have been harvested and the field mice now scurry to the barn looking for shelter.  Moocher, Maud, and Magnus await them.

Moocher

Maude

Magnus

A strong, cold wind blows here and great swirls of colored maple and oak leaves, corn stalks, and other remains of summer bundle up, lift off, and disappear into the beyond.

How many past residents of this dwelling have sat before a fire and pondered the passing of time?  How many more future residents will turn back the clocks, pause for a while, and reflect on time lost and time gained?

Merry Mount circa. 1945

To Think of Time

To think of time—of all that retrospection!  To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!   Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?  Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?  Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?  Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?  If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, real, alive!  that  everything was alive!  To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part!  To think that we are now here, and bear our part!

To think how much pleasure there is!  Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems?  Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and  election? or with your wife and family?  Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful maternal cares?  —These also flow onward to others—you and I flow onward, But in due time, you and I shall take less interest in them.

Your farm, profits, crops,—to think how engross’d you are!  To think there will still be farms, profits, crops—yet for you, of what avail?  What will be, will be well—for what is, is well, To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.

The sky continues beautiful,  The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of women with men,  nor the pleasure from poems,  The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses—these are  not  phantasms—they have weight, form, location;  Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms,  The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, The earth is not an echo—man and his life, and all the things of his life, are  well-consider’d.

You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely around yourself; Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, forever and ever!

               Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

We at Merry Mount savor time spent here and it is our goal to make the most of it, and create a place of beauty for those that presently occupy it, and for generations to come.

CPW