Autumn in the Country

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

“All the signs of the autumn came, the heavy plush-like asters, buckberries and frostflowers, everlasting and chicory–all the last tokens of the living year. The mockingbird would sing a few notes, reminiscent of spring after the quiet of the late summer, and on moonlight nights the cocks would crow all night long. Ellen bought a fresh ribbon for her dress and a bit of lace for her throat and blossomed anew with the frostweeds and the last of the chicory that lingered far into October. The abundance of autumn was again in the air, the summary of the growing season.”

–Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Time of Man (1926).

Courthouse Rock in the Red River Gorge Geological Area in Kentucky. (Photo by Corey Heitz courtesy of Flickr and Wikipedia Commons).

Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881-1941). Born in Perryville, Kentucky. Novelist and poet, especially well known for her novels The Time of Man and The Great Meadow (1930).

Here’s a link to the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, an organization devoted to scholarship and making her work better known:

http://emrsociety.com/

Patrick Kerin

Sources:

The Time of Man by Elizabeth Madox Roberts. University Press of Kentucky, 1982. Lexington, Kentucky. Originally published by The Viking Press in 1926.