Autumn1
By Geerhardus Vos
Translated by Daniel Ragusa
Still lingers golden autumn, still stand harvest colors,
Ripening in field, still roams through woods and gardens
A lovely postlude of summer’s most pleasant hours—
The sweetest melody was saved until the end.
Listen! Amidst it quakes a sad tone of parting,
So soft one wonders: does it melt in joy or pain?
As if the player were the silence preparing,
When shall have faded away the last note and strain.
How brief bloom and song! A Goliath with steel blades,
Winter soon appears, a great sickle in his hand;
When reaping’s done, he the harvest feast celebrates
And rages with storm-music through the bare-shorn land.
The Seasons Tell One Story
As the year has unfolded under the providence of God, we have welcomed each season with Geerhardus Vos as our guide. Through the lens of his nature poetry—a lens shaped by true religion and eschatology, attuned to see God’s redemption mirrored in the natural world—we have gained, and hope still to gain, God-glorifying and soul-satisfying insights into the rhythm of the seasons sovereignly ordered by our Lord (Gen. 1:14).2 The seasons teach us “to adore the wisdom of God in nature, His ways and His works.”3
Each season speaks with its own voice, yet all join in telling a single story. What is that story? The world wonders, for hearing they do not hear (Matt. 13:13). Only the Christian, whose ears are opened by the Spirit and aided by Scripture, hears in the seasons an unhurried, year-long proclamation of the old, old story: the gospel.
We have already heard spring speak of life’s miracle in the fresh tones of a child and summer sing of love’s might in the ardent tones of a bride. Now autumn enters—aged yet grand. Her voice is perplexing—at once majestic and mournful, splendid and solemn. She is robed in a dazzlement of glory, burning with scarlet, gold, and amber, while winter waits at the threshold, sickle in hand. Where does the story of the seasons lead now? Vos brings us along to see in his poem “Autumn.”
Analysis of “Autumn”
Vos’s “Autumn” consists of three quatrains—the first two preparing for the third, when winter, long looming in the shadows, finally emerges like a Goliath. Its governing metaphor is music: “postlude” (line 3), “melody” (line 4), “tone” (line 5), “player” (line 7), “note” (line 8), “song” (line 9), and “storm-music” (line 12). The poem moves from autumn’s “sweetest melody” to winter’s harshest “storm-music.” Yet, there is a mystery involved: How can autumn face winter’s death with majesty and grace?
The opening stanza conveys a sense of holding on by its repeated “still… still… still…,” which slows the pace, and the verbs “lingers,” “stands,” and “goes.” Yet this holding on is not desperate but dignified, not pathetic but majestic. Autumn appears “golden,” her crops are “ripening,” and her hope is voiced as a “lovely postlude.” The first two images are visible to all—we see them every autumn—but the third is subtler: a hidden, even spiritual truth, for those with ears to hear. The end closes in, yet autumn plays not a dirge. In a wonderful surprise, she has saved her “sweetest melody” for this very moment. Who can fade away with such beauty and grace?
The second stanza calls us to listen more closely to that third description of autumn’s “lovely postlude” like a readying hush. “Listen!” says the poet. Amidst the majesty and sweetness, what else do you hear? The poet tunes our ears to “a sad tone of parting.” This soft yet discernible undertone shows that she is not ignorant of the inevitability of her parting. She plays her sweetest melody with full awareness of her unavoidable farewell. What strength! She will not face Goliath’s taunt with ears stopped, nor be dragged unwillingly to meet her challenger. With poise, she herself prepares the silence, as the poet says about her, ““when shall have faded away the last note.” Again, the question arises: How can she do this? Clearly her song carries a secret—a secret those who live under the shadow of death long to know.
The final stanza opens with a strong contrast with the first. Whereas the first lingered with its triple “still… still… still…,” the final laments, “How brief bloom and song!” (line 9, emphasis added). Winter’s appearance provides a new perspective. It really did not matter how long her song lingered; it was bound to feel all too brief once its last note faded away into silence.
Winter appears as that ancient Philistine champion, clad in death and dragon armor, who defied the armies of the living God: Goliath of Gath (1 Sam. 17:4–5, 10). Scripture tells us that “the shaft of his spear [Dutch spies] was like a weaver’s beam” (v. 7). There may be some analogy between Goliath’s weapon and winter’s “sickle” (Dutch spieren), which he uses to cut down queenly autumn. The “sweetest melody” of autumn has ceased, her “lovely postlude” ended, and winter rages in storm-music as the victor feasts.
But is winter’s triumph the final word? Does the story of the seasons that began with spring in her cradle end in tragedy? Certainly not. Remember autumn’s “lovely postlude,” with its “sweetest melody,” as winter drew near. She prepared the silence for when her last note will have faded away. In the face of death, she hoped against hope.
There is also more to the Goliath analogy than winter’s seemingly supernatural strength—it also anticipates winter’s downfall, and that at the hand of the least expected: “Saul said to David, ‘You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth.’ … David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground” (1 Sam. 17:33, 49–51). Vos’s final poem in the cycle, “Winter’s Death,” unveils the full-strength of autumn’s secret, her hidden hope. It opens:
Here lies the Winter hated,
Goliath-like prostrated,
Whom David’s stone laid low.4
“Winter’s Death” is not about the death winter inflicts but the death with which winter itself is inflicted. That is good news. The seasons, then, join to tell a single story of death’s defeat, a story of resurrection! That is the mystery of autumn’s majesty, the reason she saved her “sweetest melody … until the end” (line 4). She knew of spring’s resurrection power, so she embraced winter with unflinching hope.
In the mirror of royal autumn, we glimpse a reflection of the true king, who lays down his life that he may take it up again. No one takes it from him, but he lays it down of his own accord (John 10:17–18). His death was the death of death.
We see also reflected the secret that we who live under the shadow of death longed to know: The true king has transformed death for his people so that we, too, in union with him, can face the grave with beauty and grace, with resurrection hope.
Application: An Autumnal Hope
More poems about autumn have graced the earth than the trillions of leaves on the ground. What about this season that captivates the poetic imagination? Kathleen Jamie, in her introductory essay to Autumn: A Folio Anthology, suggests it is partly nostalgia for what is passing and partly appreciation for the slowing down of time in the gathering and storing. There is truth in this. In Vos’s poem, autumn speaks with sadness and slowness. But there is a deeper truth spoken by autumn. As we have heard, her boldest speech is not about the past or the present but about the future.
On the spine of the universe as God’s “beautiful book” (Belgic Confession 2) is written: creation and providence. This book contains the rhythm of the seasons. Yet we read it rightly only by the light of God’s second book: Holy Scripture. That second book tells us that creation’s deepest longing is neither nostalgia, a longing for the past, nor desperation, holding on to the present at any cost, but hope. Creation longs for what is still to come. As the apostle Paul writes, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19).
This hope comes to its most majestic expression when it is most deeply tested—nowhere more than in autumn, as winter approaches. Autumn inspires our poetic imagination by her glory in going to the grave with hope.
We, therefore, cannot rightly think of autumn in isolation from the fourfold cycle of the seasons. Imagine an autumn with no spring: Winter would be the end, and autumn’s willingness to face winter’s death with queenly poise would be folly. But autumn tells a different story. Autumn is like a prophet, foretelling spring’s power by which the snow will melt and the trees will defy death with fresh shoots from the dirt. Autumn, then, confesses to the world: Death has been transformed.
In the same way that we cannot think of autumn without spring, so, too, the Christian cannot think of death without resurrection—or, better, of sharing in Christ’s death without also sharing in his resurrection. Heidelberg Catechism 42 summarizes this kind of autumnal hope:
Q. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die?
A. Our death is not a payment for our sins, but only a dying to sins and an entering into eternal life.
In autumn, we glimpse this transformation of death into a gateway opening to eternal life. In autumn, we see a reversal of the fall. For the keys of death and Hades are now in the hands of the living one, who died and, behold, is alive forevermore (Rev. 1:18).
Autumn reflects as in a mirror the good news concerning our risen Lord and faithful Savior—we belong to him, “body and soul, in life and in death” (Heidelberg Catechism 1).
- Geerhardus Vos, “Autumnus,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica (Geerhardus Vos, 1927), 44. This translation is my own; I have tried to maintain the rhyme scheme and meter of the original Dutch. The original meter is alexandrine with twelve syllables per line. ↩︎
- See Geerhardus Vos, Theology Proper, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, trans., Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Lexham Press, 2012), 172. ↩︎
- Geerhardus Vos, Natural Theology, trans. Albert Gootjes (Reformation Heritage Books, 2022), 5. By “us,” Vos has in mind the Christian who believes God’s specially revealed word by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit for he distinguishes this use of natural theology from its apologetical use: “for refuting those who have rejected the supernatural revelation of God.” Vos, Natural Theology, 5. ↩︎
- This is taken from the English translation of this poem in Geerhardus Vos, Charis: English Verses (Geerhardus Vos, 1931), 18. The original is Vos, “Mors Hyemis,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica, 45–46. ↩︎
