Quatrain 21
Quatrain 21 of 75
“Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.”
Reflection · Autumn
The loveliest and the best — not the old and tired, not the ones whose departure seemed inevitable. The loveliest. The best. Time and Fate press the vintage from these too, with the same indifferent thoroughness applied to the ordinary ones. A round or two before — they are already there, in the rest, ahead of us. Not permanently ahead; just earlier. We are following.
In autumn you can feel this following quality in the season itself — everything following the summer into the gold, following the gold into the brown, following the brown into the bare. One by one crept silently — this is the truest detail. The going is not announced. The great are not exceptions to the silence of departure. This levels everything in a way that is, if you are willing to feel it fully, a kind of grace.