The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Old Poetry in An Old House IN ALL THESE years of random writing I have produced paeans of praise for nearly every state in the union, but I have never breathed a...
...Now, in October, the maples ruled supreme...
...Windsor and Weathersfield had the good sense to get together and build a colony which later became a state...
...I got satisfaction out of just sitting and holding it and gazing at it...
...I had not read it since my student days, but now, in this old house and after our long woodland walk, it came to me with a peculiar appropriateness...
...The World Series was on while we were up there, but we paid it no heed...
...The wood consisted mostly of maple—though there was a generous sprinkling of the rich and graceful white pine...
...It is a flowing, changing universe...
...Instead we went for a walk along a high and precipitous wooded hill and down into a valley and out into the open air above a dashing waterfall which breaks the course of the Shepaug river...
...Everywhere we looked they were beginning to turn their gorgeous reds and yellows...
...And so far as basic things are concerned, strangely little has changed...
...This led, of course, to talk of the various times and seasons all over the country...
...He observed, just as I do, all of the minute changes which go on day by day and night by night throughout the years: the leaves, the grasses, the flowering plants, the countless birds with their varied songs and winged ways...
...An old friend had inherited a house which was built just after the Revolution...
...And to make life simply perfect, this book turned out to be a copy of James Thomson's The Seasons, printed in 1818...
...The man had a real love for all of the things that go to make up human life and the human world...
...They had had their day in April and May...
...As I read this little book I felt that practically the whole world is there between those dainty covers—the earth, the sea, the sky, the city, the country, all things animate and inanimate...
...James Thomson, we were taught in our youthful days, brought the first murmurings of romanticism to 18th century British poetry...
...But, it was not the flowers which attracted our chief attention...
...I suppose it was because they printed fewer books in those days that they produced better–looking and more durable ones...
...This Revolutionary hide–out is protected by a piece of road that almost tears your car to pieces before you get there...
...I have long been thankful that the towns of Hartford...
...Had it been spring, we would have talked about the flowers...
...My father used to say that America has practically no spring but it has the loveliest autumn in the world...
...But as I read him now he seems to me much more and much better than a mere harbinger...
...At any rate, you would be content to remain there for the rest of your life...
...And when we returned from our tramp over highland and low, I threw myself into one of those comfortable old rocking–chairs in one of those cozy, low–ceilinged rooms and there before me I saw an old bookcase loaded with the lovely old books which they knew so well how to print at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Old Poetry in An Old House IN ALL THESE years of random writing I have produced paeans of praise for nearly every state in the union, but I have never breathed a word about the stout little commonwealth of Connecticut...
...And we talked of the seasons and of how in New England the autumn is the prime period of the turning year...
...Having recently returned from the breath–taking mountains and valleys of the West, I was in the right mood last week when we rolled up for a few days among the Berkshire Hills of northwestern Connecticut...
...Khrushchev and Communism seem far off and no hurricane or earthquake will threaten—as they are known to do in some less substantially founded areas...
...He was thinking, of course, of New England, and we were strolling along, happy to be in this favored clime at this high season of the year...
...I recalled that Emerson—or maybe it was Longfellow—suggested that through the wood they "in maiden beauty stood," but I couldn't beat down the notion that they looked sort of skinny and old– maidenly...
...What this little corner of our country has produced both physically and intellectually could not possibly be recorded in any list...
...The canyons of the Rockies take your breath away, but this little fold in the New England hills gives you a complete sense of security...
...Even the buzzing, humming, biting insects, no matter how tiny or unimportant, are not overlooked...
...The first one which my seeking hand pulled down was really perfect—done in rich brown leather with the design stamped in gold...
...Mechanisms have been altered, but the great world itself swings on as of yore...
...Just try to imagine what this country would have been without the institutions of learning which have been fostered in this little nook of New England...
...There were thousands of asters...
...And once having reached the spot, you naturally want to postpone the dangers of retreat as long as possible...
...It is a little state—third in size—but it is full of life, energy and imagination...
Vol. 42 • October 1959 • No. 38
