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Quotations about August
August... brings katydids, elderberries, blackberry pie, and goldenrod... August is just another thirty-one days of concentrated Summer, but it certainly gets one in condition to appreciate Fall when it comes. Good old August — we'll take it, and some of us will like it. ~Hal Borland
Now August comes with a dreamy haze of heat. ~Gladys Taber
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne...
~Sara Coleridge (1802–1852), "The Months"
August... the very dead of summer... Spring was a fever and autumn will be a regret, but this is the month too aware of its own successful achievement to be more than barely sentient. The growth which continues seems without effort, like the accumulation of fat. If Nature is ever purely vegetative, it is now. She is but barely conscious. ~Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons, 1949
The August morning, shining and scented, lured him outside. ~May Sinclair, A Cure of Souls, 1924
Summer...
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky...
~Dorothy Parker, "August," Enough Rope, 1926
August is one of the hottest months of the northern year, so hold your breath and see that the fan is in order. It is also one of the longest months, and sometimes it seems even longer. ~Hal Borland
When the petal falls and lies
Wrinkled like a leaf that dies,
When the flower that once was merry
Sobers to the russet berry,
When the rose and hawthorn draws
Slowly down to hips and haws,
'T is the season birds are mute,
'Twixt the flower and the fruit.
~Philip Henry Savage (1868–1899), "In August," Poems, 1898
The long, languorous days of August have cast their spell over the earth. Little by little, nature yields to the seductive influence and sinks into her summer sleep. Lazily-languid like southern beauties, the hours follow each other in slow succession. ~Sister Mary Blanche (Elizabeth King, b.1852), "A Summer Siesta," Idyls and Sketches, 1916
June in the branches sleeps its fill;
July and August are dead still...
~Mark Van Doren, "Hardhead," Spring Thunder and Other Poems, 1924
Rejoice! ye fields, rejoice! and wave with gold,
When August round her precious gifts is flinging...
~John Ruskin (1819–1900), "The Months"
There are those who shudder at the approach of Autumn; and who feel a light grief stealing over their spirits, like an October haze, as the evening shadows slant sooner, and longer, over the face of an ending August day. But is not Autumn the Manhood of the year? Is it not the ripest of the seasons?
August is here; within the ivy leaves
The bees make mournful music, and the sea
Is pale with presaged Autumn and wild songs
Wanton upon the waves… Strange spirits speak
Within the dusk-winds; phantom-hands implore
Sweet Summer back again. The sunshine stands
Reluctantly upon the mountain-top
Smiling farewell to the awaiting waves.
Already evening brings a scent of frost,
And late the white dew lies upon the lawn.
The harvest moon grows pallid in the sky,
And far the stars seem on their sapphire thrones.
August is here, and soon September's chill
Will fade the flowers in their glowing beds;
Love, only Love, survives the Season's change.
~Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff, "August," Atys: A Grecian Idyl and Other Poems, 1909
August thunderstorms are masterpieces of bluster and bombardment. And sometimes August is bone-dry and full of dust, and we would gladly swap the whole of it for one rainy March week end. ~Hal Borland
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are the strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after. ~Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting, 1975
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby;
Rest for a moment, love;
The August sun is dropping
His firebrands from above...
~Sara L. Vickers Oberholtzer, "An August Lullaby," Souvenirs of Occasions, 1892
The weather turned cooler after the storm. Real August weather... The days were brisk and clear and blue, and the nights were chilly. As the chorus of the crickets and the katydids died down to a mere murmur, people talked of an early frost. ~Gerald Raftery, Snow Cloud, 1951
O mellow month and merry month,
Let me make love to you,
And follow you around the world
As knights their ladies do.
I thought your sisters beautiful,
Both May and April, too,
But April she had rainy eyes,
And May had eyes of blue.
And June—I liked the singing
Of her lips, and liked her smile—
But all her songs were promises
Of something, after while;
And July's face—the lights and shade
That may not long beguile,
With alternations o'er the wheat,
The dreamer at the stile.
But you!—ah, you are tropical,
Your beauty is so rare;
Your eyes are clearer, deeper eyes
Than any, anywhere;
Mysterious, imperious,
Deliriously fair,
O listless Andalusian maid,
With bangles in your hair!
~James Whitcomb Riley, "August"
I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February... February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse — except August. There were days in August when I felt as though God had lowered a giant glass lid over the whole steaming Bay... On the water the haze was so thick it was like trying to inhale wet cotton... In February the weather sometimes gave us a vacation, in August, never. We just got up earlier every morning until finally we met ourselves going to bed. ~Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved, 1980
The change always comes about mid-August, and it always catches me by surprise. I mean the day when I know that summer is fraying at the edges, that September isn't far off and fall is just over the hill or up the valley. ~Hal Borland
Again I find that I have anticipated and reached the autumn before I have finished with the summer... ~Kate Trimble Sharber (b.1883), At the Age of Eve, 1911
[O]nly a few more days of August were to run, and September seemed already to have claimed the gardens, the fields, and the skies. ~Jeanie Gwynne Bettany Kernahan, The Sinnings of Seraphine, 1906
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published 2012 Sep 3
revised 2021 Mar 2
last saved 2024 Sep 3
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