The second week of September fell upon us and we - who live in the Northern hemisphere - can already witness the colours changing outside our windows, the weather becoming slightly chilly and the feeling of cozying up under a nice warm blanket sounds increasingly appealing.
To welcome and celebrate this colourful season, we'd like to introduce you to this heartwarming poem we recently discovered which is written by Helen Hunt Jackson and is inspired by the month of September.
We hope you'll enjoy the wonderful imagery Helen managed to capture in her words as much as we did!
September by Helen Hunt Jackson falls under public domain.
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O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung
On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue
To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped
In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;
And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among
The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung
Her utmost gold. To highest boughs have leaped
The purple grape,—last thing to ripen, late
By very reason of its precious cost.
O Heart, remember, vintages are lost
If grapes do not for freezing night-dews wait.
Think, while thou sunnest thyself in Joy's estate,
Mayhap thou canst not ripen without frost!
*
Helen Hunt Jackson
Helen Hunt Jackson, born in Massachusetts on October 15, 1830, was an American poet, writer, and activist for Native American rights. She was born into a very strict Calvinist family and later studied in female boarding schools in Massachusetts and New York.
In 1852 she married an army officer Edward Bissell Hunt and they had two kids together. Unfortunately, their first son died at the age of eleven months from a brain tumor. Nine years later, Helen's husband was killed while experimenting with a submarine explosive device, and in 1865 their second son died of diphtheria.
Helen was devastated by these tragedies and soon after moved to New Port, Rhode Island, to grieve and rest. Her first poem, 'Coronation', was heavily based on the loss and sorrow she experienced. After her poetry found its large audience, Helen started writing more; it not only became a passion but also quite a profitable way to make a living. She soon started producing hundreds of poems, articles, stories, essays, and travel sketches for magazines such as The Century, The Nation, and Independent.
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In the winter of 1873, she moved to Colorado Springs to a resort of Seven Falls in hopes to treat her tuberculosis there. Soon, she met William Sharpless Jackson and they got married in 1875. Although her new husband was from a wealthy family, Helen still continued to earn her independent living by publishing stories and travel sketches about life in the West.
Her life and writing direction changed in 1879 when she attended a lecture in Boston given by Standing Bear, chief of the Ponca tribe. His speech detailed abuse and suffering which his tribe faced at the hands of the U.S. government. Helen was hugedly moved by that and soon after became committed to generating public support for Native American rights.
Her most known novel, 'Ramona', was published in 1884 and featured an orphan half-Indian, half-white woman and her Indian husband. This work was born out of her deep research about Native Americans and its main purpose was to draw attention to Native American rights and their life struggles, hoping to open people's eyes and to change the way the U.S. government treated them. The novel became an instant bestseller and has gone through over three hundred printings since the original publication date.
Helen died only one year after the publication of 'Ramona'.
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As we did our research for this article, we found out that, sadly, Helen Hunt Jackson falls mostly under those 'gone and forgotten' authors. That made us curious:
→ Did you know about Helen Hunt Jackson before reading this?
→ Have you read her novel 'Ramona'? If yes, what were your thoughts? If not, would you be interested in reading it now?
→ Have you ever read or stumbled upon her poetry?
→ Are you a poet yourself? If so, have you ever been inspired by Autumn and have you written a poem(s) about this wonderful time? (If yes, feel free to share your autumnal poetry with us in the comments! We'd love to read it!)
