Aspects of Autumn

Autumn.  Misty mornings, a chilly feel to the air but with a freshness that summer does not bring. Short days, snuggling up beside a cosy fire.  The harvest is safely gathered in and the fields being prepared for another season.

Him indoors took this picture in fields near to where we live. He has taken others which I will share with you another time.

Harvest festivals in the churches.  Bunches of corn, plaited loaves, fresh shiny apples, the wonderful autumnal flowers and people coming together to give thanks for such abundance.

This time of the year always reminds me of a favourite poem, one about a little mouse and I would like to share it with you today.  Some of you might know it very well, to others it might be new but it conjures up lovely mental images to me. I can see the little mouse in my mind. The author is a very favourite poet of mine.

 

Diary Of A Church Mouse

Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the Vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnawthe marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes...it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear the organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

~ Sir John Betjeman

To hear the poem read aloud by the man himself, please go here:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/betjeman.shtml

Wishing you all a happy and blessed Sunday and a great week ahead.  We shall be spending this afternoon with our two wonderful grandsons.  I look forward to reading them that poem one day.