--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lambourne, Alfred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 11 published: 1917-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Alfred Lambourne, "Autumn," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 11 (September 1917): 996–997.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera20011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera20011unse start_page: 996 end_page: 997 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera20011unse publication_year: 1917 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Autumn IMPROVEMENT ERA Autumn Paragraphs from "Our Inland Sea" Alfred Lambourne A mighty drowsiness is on the land. The Harvest Moon —the Indians' Moon of Falling Leaves—has sup- planted the Moons of Fire. Dream-like has become my island. Ruddy, like a weary and belated sun, comes up the Autumn moon, and like a vast Koh-i-noor, the sun itself is blurred and yellow. Haze-enwrapped are the dis- tant Wasatch Mountains; through deepening shades of saddened violet, the Onaqui Range lapses into melancholia. The western headlands, the jutting promontories, ap- pear as if cut from dim, orange crepe, or maroon-colored velvet. Wistful and vague stand the peaked islands, and shell-like is the gleam of the outstretched brine. One more turn and the present richness of the time will be gone. In the heavens there is a transfiguration, and the transfiguration extends to earth! Always there are the same great stretches of water around this solitary island, always the same dreary and monotonous hills; ever the same strange walls of rock and ever the same wild peaks in clustered multitudes. But how the seasons and the great sun play with them! They are ever the same, yet never the same; eternal yet evanescent, playthings with time and the elements. Autumn is to the seasons as twilight to the day. Both work a similar effect upon the mind. In autumn all the splendor of the sunset skies lies on the woods. But, ah! it must be confessed, it wants in spirituality. It no longer makes us think of the Cherubim, the wings of archangels, but rather of the earthly garments of prelates and kings. Now comes the end of Autumn. The last cold rain has frozen as it fell. In sheets and ice-embossings it gleams on the island rocks. There is a tone of menace, a moan-like sound in the wind. Long since the old, and the gray-winged gulls have flown. From out the sky, and softened by distance, there falls the dissonant clang of migratory geese. Once more I hear, a sound to stir the blood as one listens, the trumpet call of the southward- flying swan.