Exit stage left lady of summer with your verdant gown muddied and now shorn of beauty save the last fading flowers. To bed have gone her beloved insects and now she will retreat to the southern hemisphere to be renewed amid its longer days. She leaves with a retinue of swallows over calm seas and as the leaves run after her chill comes.

Entrance stage right the lady August wrapped in the cloak of dusk with shimmering mists wreathing her feet below bronzed hued raiments. She carries a huge cornucopia of bounty bearing the fruits of summer’s growth and in the dry days and icy nights ahead gives us time to gather them up. As we sow, we now reap with sickles and songs made more urgent by the fading days.