My favorite poem

This is by Lin Yutang:
There comes a time in our lives,
as nations and as individuals,
when we are pervaded by the spirit of early autumn,
in which green is mixed with gold and sadness is mixed with joy,
and hope is mixed with reminiscence.

There comes a time in our lives
when the innocence of spring is a memory and
the exuberance of the summer a song
whose echoes remain faintly in the air,
when as we look out on life,
the problem is not how to grow but how to live truly,
not how to strive and labor
but how to enjoy the precious moments we have,
not how to squander our energy
but how to conserve it in preparation of the coming winter.
A sense of having arrived somewhere,
of having settled and having found out what we want.
A sense of having achieved something also,
precious little compared with its past exuberance,
but still something, like an autumn forest shorn of its summer glory
but retaining such of it as will endure.

I like spring, but it is too young.
I like summer, but it is too proud.
So I like best of all autumn,
because its leaves are a little yellow,
its tone mellower, its colors richer,
and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death.
Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring,
nor of the power of summer,
but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age.
It knows the limitations of life and its content.
From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience
emerges a symphony of colors, richer than all,
its green speaking of life and strength,
its orange speaking of golden content
and its purple of resignation and death.