Mount Tabor enters the book not as a visited setting but as a sacred landmark recalled within a poem. The speaker’s companions remember that, by the Old Style calendar, the day is the sixth of August, the Feast of the Transfiguration; on that feast, a light without a flame is said to issue from Mount Tabor. The mountain lends a precise religious and seasonal meaning to the poem’s farewell scene, where autumn’s splendor draws every eye.

The Feast and Its Calendar

The poem ties Mount Tabor to a particular day in the Orthodox liturgical calendar: the sixth of August according to the Old Style, identified as the Lord’s Transfiguration. The date is not merely a timestamp. By recalling a recurring feast, the poem places its moment of parting within sacred time, a cycle that survives the immediate occasion and gives it a larger frame.

Light Without a Flame

The mountain is associated with a light that ordinarily issues from it on the feast day, yet the poem calls it a light without a flame. That paradox makes Mount Tabor an image of radiance that cannot be reduced to a visible source. The scene then turns to autumn, refulgent and commanding attention like an oriflamme: seasonal splendor and sacred illumination converge without becoming identical.

The Mountain in the Farewell Scene

The recollection of the feast arises as a crowd comes through the woods to see the speaker off. The remembered date and Mount Tabor’s customary light interrupt the immediate scene of leave-taking, setting personal separation beside a recurrent sacred observance. The mountain’s significance lies in this joining of scales: a specific day, a yearly religious feast, and the enduring brightness through which the poem imagines autumn.