the dying of the year

I'm driving down the highway with the window down and a cool soft breeze blowing through my hair.

The sun is going down behind a long line of clouds and they're dazzlingly bright, white gold against the deepening blue sky.
Our streetlights are just starting to come on and gloom is gathering on the ground between the trees, but the tops are still painted in thick, heavy golden light, like egg yolk.

I am thinking how beautiful and sad autumn is, the dying of the year, bittersweet as we look back on summer and ahead to the bleak dreary winter.

I love these warm, mellow days, golden afternoons, cool evenings, and crisp mornings, but they always make me feel melancholy.

The Bard says it best:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

image from here