AUTUMN
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 12:57:00 AM
The Science Bit. They fall because a cork-like layer cuts off the supply of water to the leaf and so the green chlorophyll fades away exposing the colours underneath. The yellows/oranges come from carotenoids,and the reds/purples from anthocyanins in the leaf.
The Poetic Bit. Autumn has inspired many people to write about it:
Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Wonderful downpour of leaf. When the morning sun began to melt the first frost,they fell at one touch and in a few minutes a whole tree was flung of them; they lay masking and papering the ground at the foot. Then the tree seems to be looking down on its cast self as blue sky on snow after a long fall,its losing, its doing."
Andrew Young. "The scarlet hips hang on the briar, like coffins on the dead dog-rose, all were bright as though for earth, death were a gayer thing than birth."
George Crabbe. "On the right side the youth a wood survey`d, with all its dark intensity of shade ,when the rough wind alone was heard to move, and near the bean-sheaf stood ,the harvest done, and slowly blacken`d in the sickly sun."
Tennyson. "Sweetened with with summer light, the full-juiced apple waxing over-mellow, drops in a silent autumn night."
John Donne " No Spring, nor Summer Beauty hath such grace, as I have seen in one Autumnal face."










