St Luke’s Summer

Now is the tolling time

Between the falling and the buried leaf;

A solitary bell

Saddens the soft air with the last knell of summer.

Gone is the swallow’s flight, the curving sheaf;

The plums are bruised that hung from a bent bough,

Wasp-plundered apples in the dew-drenched grass

Lie rotting now.

Doomed with the rest, the daggered hawthorn bleeds

Bright crimson beads

For the birds’ feast.

Gone are the clusters of ripe cherries,

Tart crabs and damsons where a bullfinch tarried,

Only the camp-fire coloured rowan berries

Blaze on.

Now is the time of slow, mist-hindered dawns,

Of sun that stains

Weeds tarnished early in the chilling rains,

Of coarse-cut stubble fields

Where starlings gather, busy with the scant grain,

And with hoarse chattering proclaim

The spent season.

Now are the last days of warm sun

That fires rusted bracken on the hill;

And mellows the deserted trees

Where the last leaves cling, sapless, shrunk, and yellow.

A robin finds some warm October bough

Recapturing his song

Of Aprils gone,

And tardy blackbirds in the late-green larch

Remember March.

Phoebe Hesketh 

St Luke’s-tide lovers exchange tokens and set the wedding date.

It was anciently very customary  . . . .to break a piece of Gold or Silver in token of a verbal contract of marriage and promises of love; one half whereof was kept by the woman, while the other part remained with the man.

Brand Popular Antiquities 1813