10/08/2026
Rokeby Museum continues our series on Rowland E. Robinson (1833-1900) with another excerpt from his 1896 work, "In New England Field and Woods."
OCTOBER DAYS
“Fields as green as when the summer birds caroled above them, woods more gorgeous with innumerable hues and tints of ripening leaves than a blooming parterre, are spread beneath the azure sky, whose deepest color is reflected with intenser blue in lake and stream.
How sharp the dark shadows are cut against the sunlit fields, and in their gloom how brightly shine the first fallen leaves and the starry bloom of the asters. In cloudy days and even when rain is falling the depths of the woods are not dark, for the bright foliage seems to give forth light and casts no shadows beneath the lowering sky.
The scarlet maples burn, the golden leaves of poplar and birch shine through the misty veil, and the deep purple of the ash glows as if it held a smouldering fire that the first breeze might fan into a flame, and through all this luminous leafage one may trace branch and twig as a wick in a candle flame...
The air is of a temper neither too hot nor too cold, and in what is now rather the good gay wood than green wood, there are no longer pestering insects to worry the flesh and trouble the spirit...Of insect life one hears little but the mellow drone of the bumblebee, the noontide chirp of the cricket, and the husky rustle of the dragonfly's gauzy wing.
Unwise are the tent-dwellers who have folded their canvas and departed to the shelter of more stable roof-trees, for these are days that should be made the most of, days that have brought the perfected ripeness of the year and display it in the fullness of its glory.”
- “October Days”, In New England Fields and Woods, 168 - 172
