A Ode to an Autumn Day

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;

Ok, Shakespeare, I'm gonna stop you right here. 

For the life of me I can't understand why a woman would want to be compared to a summer's day. You are more lovely and more temperate? Well duh. I've never found 90 degrees and humid lovely, and certainly that doesn't fit the definition of temperate. 

 And I'm not just saying this because I am covered in a layer of flesh and fur and am always hot. Also, can you picture summer day's in the 16th century? I can't imagine mosquitoes and malaria and sweating in your pantaloons was hard to top with one's beauty back in Shakespeare's day. 

Everyone remembers Vivaldi's take on spring, lovely and romantic, and winter is a dramatic close while autumn is playful and folksy. Do you remember summer in the Four Seasons?


Summer is the grumpy old man of the seasons. The violins are brusque, impatient, and forceful. It is the sound of a terribly humid day that turns into a flash flood.
Summer is kind of lose-lose: it's either too hot to go outside, so you stay in, or its raining too heavily, so you stay in. I don't know who Billy Shake impressed by calling them lovelier than a summer's day; yeah no shit, Shakespeare.

Now, autumn on the other hand, what a beautiful season that is.
The trees are a uniform green in summer. Autumn gives us browns, reds, oranges, and yellows. It's these colors that stand out that make nature for me.

If you want a sonnet that get's it right, here's "Pied Beauty":
Glory be to God for dappled things -
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
  Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                Praise him.

 Gerard Manley Hopkins is right, it's the dappled things that are beautiful in life: the fall colors, the freckles, the unexpected breaks from the monotony.

If I ever have a daughter, I am reading this too her as often as possible; it's the 19th century version of "Beautiful"by Christina Aguilera.
And if you keep up with my blog, you know there's a good chance my daughter will have freckles, because there's a good chance I'm gonna marry a woman who looks like Jean Grey...

Beautiful dappled autumn. I've done a fair amount of driving back to Ohio over the past two weekends. The first time I tried driving back, I got lost. Not a bad thing at all though, I got lost in beautiful Indiana fall foliage. Indiana is the garden of Eden in the fall- Brown county Indiana, the county next to Bloomington, has basically one town with 800 people in it. The town, Nashville Indiana, started as an artist's colony. And I can see why- the is the view from off the state route:

This is the best place in the world to be lost. I got a chance to stop and smell the roses, or rather look at the autumn leaves.


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
No.
Too any and all the beautiful women reading this, I shall compare thee to something more beautiful by far; you are as exquisite, refreshing, and original as an autumn day in Southern Indiana.
And I just beat Shakespeare.