Chamodi Waidyathilaka

“Every autumn I watch for one great star. It is the star Capella, and when in September I look to the north and see it rising over the somber roof line of a deserted barn, I know that winter is near.

Night after night it stands a little higher above the earth when twilight comes, and when arrives the true cold and the dark, it has cleared the floors of earth and the low mists and is rising on its great arc into that northeast whence come the birds whose clamor sometimes wakes us in the earlier night.

There is an order established against whose laws only fools will struggle, an order whose acceptance is the very cornerstone of life and peace.”
― Henry Beston, The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm

“October, and the trees were in full fall. The larch woods were gilded, the beech woods bronzed, and as for the oak woods, well, each and every tree seemed to be a harlequin of every possible autumn hue. Only the ashes would disappoint, their greenery just fading a little before starting to fall. And as soon as the time had come for the ashes to start shedding their leaves, the jackdaw ash on the rocks behind the cottage would give up its struggle; one day it would be in full leaf, the next I would look and it would be totally bare. It would always be the first. All the others would take weeks to surrender to the inevitable and become leafless save for the bunches of keys at their tips, which the wood-pigeons would come and unpick, swinging from the slender twigs with surprising dexterity.
The winds came, and blew in gust after gust of redwings, huge numbers of them but in discrete flocks of twenty or thirty travelling at impossible speed with the winds hard behind them. They came all day long, newly blown in from Scandinavia, and gathered down in the valley.”
― Neil Ansell, Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“Two Pursuits
A voice said: ‘Follow, follow:’ and I rose
And followed far into the dreamy night, Turning my back upon the pleasant light.
It led me where the bluest water ows,
And would not let me drink; where the corn grows
I dared not pause, but went uncheered by sight Or touch; until at length in evil plight
It left me, wearied out with many woes. Some time I sat as one bereft of sense:
But soon another voice from very far Called: ‘Follow, follow:’ and I rose again.°
Now on my night has dawned a blesséd star;
Kind, steady hands my sinking steps sustain, And will not leave me till I shall go hence.”
― Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems

“Dream Land
Where sunless rivers weep° Their waves into the deep, She sleeps a charméd sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.°
She left the rosy morn,
She left the elds of corn, For twilight cold and lorn°
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil, She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest Shed over brow and breast; Her face is toward the west, In the long ago.”
― Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems