#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/09/28 -- Autumn's Arrival

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 48: September 28, 2022

 

Autumn’s Arrival

 

“A Tribute to Johnny Appleseed: Pioneer Nurseryman”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Expanded from Cursus Honorum VI: 3 (October 2005)

 

This woodcut of John Chapman appeared in Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio (Ohio Centennial Edition, 1903). (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Ever since my Kindergarten class took a field trip to a local apple orchard in September 1973, I’ve been a perennial fan of Johnny Appleseed. The pioneer hero who headed west from his New England home to bring apple trees to the pioneers and Native Americans captured my imagination at an early age and has never let it go.

Johnny Appleseed, one of America's most beloved homegrown heroes, has been the subject of countless poems, folksongs, novels, plays, and even a Walt Disney cartoon. Johnny’s appeal has vastly increased over the past fifty years, concurrent with the emergence of global concern over rampant deforestation and the drive to develop sustainable agriculture on a worldwide scale. Behind the larger-than-life legend of Johnny Appleseed, however, there was once an admirable historical person: John Chapman, a pioneer nurseryman from New England.

John Chapman was born on September 26, 1774 near Leominster, Massachusetts. Details of his childhood are sketchy, but he learned to read and write at an early age and evidently chose to follow an arboricultural career in his teens, for by the time he was 25, he had already planted apple orchards in the western counties of New York and Pennsylvania. During the early 1800s, he pushed farther west into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois – planting apple trees all over the wilderness, where they could be enjoyed by the arriving settlers.

Wherever he journeyed on the frontier, Chapman earned the respect and trust of the Native Americans and coexisted peacefully with the wild animals. He practiced vegetarianism, never carried a weapon of any kind, and was by all accounts an amiable and hard-working person. Although he led a solitary life in the wilderness for weeks or months at a time, he enjoyed interacting with the people who crossed his path and regaling them with stories of his frontier adventures. It is estimated that he planted millions of apple seeds during his fifty years of arboricultural activity; this was his lifelong philanthropic service to our country.

Johnny Appleseed, as he came to be known in his later years, died near Fort Wayne, Indiana, on March 11, 1845. His grave has become a historic site, as have other places where he once lived and labored. Descendants of his original apple trees can still be found throughout Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and his legacy of philanthropic arboriculture is still celebrated at annual Midwestern festivals, especially in the autumn, when apple cider is in season.

Johnny Appleseed’s popularity shows no sign of waning. He played many roles during his lifetime -- nurseryman, peacemaker, pioneer, and storyteller. In our own time, he has come to represent such worthy causes as conservation, environmentalism, and sustainable agriculture. John Chapman will no doubt continue to inspire generations yet to come with his philanthropic life and trailblazing achievements that still benefit his fellow Americans more than two centuries after his labors first began.

 

“A Song of Early Autumn”

By Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909)

 

When late in summer the streams run yellow,

Burst the bridges and spread into bays;

When berries are black and peaches are mellow,

And hills are hidden by rainy haze;

When the goldenrod is golden still,

But the heart of the sunflower is darker and sadder;

When the corn is in stacks on the slope of the hill,

And slides over the path the striped adder;

When butterflies flutter from clover to thicket,

Or wave their wings on the drooping leaf;

When the breeze comes shrill with the call of the cricket,

Grasshopper’s rasp, and rustle of sheaf;

When high in the field the fern-leaves wrinkle,

And brown is the grass where the mowers have mown;

When low in the meadow the cow-bells tinkle,

And small brooks crinkle over stock and stone;

When heavy and hollow the robin’s whistle

And shadows are deep in the heat of noon;

When the air is white with the down of the thistle,

And the sky is red with the Harvest Moon;

O, then be chary, young Robert and Mary,

No time let slip, not a moment wait!

If the fiddle would play it must stop its tuning;

And they who would wed must be done with their mooning;

So let the churn rattle, see well to the cattle,

And pile the wood by the barn-yard gate!

 

“Autumn”

By Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

 

The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry’s cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I’ll put a trinket on.

 

“Autumn”

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,

With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,

Brighter than brightest silks of Samarkand,

And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!

Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,

Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand

Outstretched with benedictions o’er the land,

Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!

Thy shield is the red Harvest Moon, suspended

So long beneath the heaven’s o’er-hanging eaves;

Thy steps are by the farmer’s prayers attended;

Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;

And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,

Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

 

“To Autumn”

By John Keats (1795-1821)

 

A 1905 illustration for Keats’ poem “To Autumn” by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966). (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

 

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

“Autumn”

By William Blake (1757-1827)

 

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained

With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayest rest,

And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,

And all the daughters of the year shall dance!

Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

“The narrow bud opens her beauties to

The Sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;

Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and

Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,

Till clustering Summer breaks forth into singing,

And feathered clouds strew flowers round her head.

The spirits of the air live on the smells

Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round

The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”

Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;

Then rose, girded himself, and over the bleak

Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.