"However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to imbibe the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative-to dream dreams, and see apparitions."
That's from Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It's Washington Irving week in old American Literature, and the weather seems to be cooperating; it's cool and windy outside, with just enough sunshine to flit against the leaves and make them explode into yellow and orange.
No students lie out on the mall and read anymore.
Instead, they sit on benches in sweaters
and look out over the browning grass
with inexplicable wistfulness.
The air doesn't hang suspended as it did in the summer.
Now it rushes around lamp posts,
tugs at hair
and scarves,
whips five page essays across the sidewalks and into
the dusty road where cars slow but don't pause.
A feeling of frenzied excitement has settled on campus,
and we all dress for a homecoming game that we won't win,
continuing to grin at those we dimly recognize from a long-ago meeting.
We read Washington Irving,
wishing all the time that we could somehow have
the lazy knoll of Rip Van Winkle back,
while still clinging to the blowing trees
as the Headless Horseman gallops by
on the dusky road.
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