And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep Or by a cider-press with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. -Keats. Once more the illimitable days are woven of haze and sunshine, and in the long bright wolds the buckwheat fields are turning brown,-brown streaked with olive and tinged with red, like the colors of health on a sunburnt cheek. There are dull, dusky reds and tawny golds in the strips of woodland that island the plain; the woodbine flings out a scarlet creeper from its background of rich maroon, and the ivory walnut slips its outer covering of dingy green, while the chestnuts in their satin-lined bed are already of a delicate fawn-color. -Elaine Goodale. The air is not balmy, but tart and pungent like the flavor of the red-cheeked apples by the roadside. In the sky not a cloud, not a speck; a vast dome of blue ether lightly suspended above the world. The woods are heaped with color like a painter's palette-great splashes of red and orange and gold. The ponds and streams bear upon their bosoms leaves of all tints, from the deep maroon of the oak to the pale yellow of the chestnut. -Burroughs And so the ripe year wanes. From turfy slopes afar the breeze brings delicious, pungent, spicy odors from the wild everlasting flowers, and the mushrooms are pearly in the grass. I gather the seed-pods in the garden beds, sharing their bounty with the birds I love so well, for there are enough and to spare for us all. Soon will set in the fitful weather, with fierce gales and sullen skies and frosty air, and it will be time to tuck up safely my roses and lilies and the rest for their long winter sleep beneath the snow, where I never forget them, but ever dream of their wakening in happy summers yet to be. -Celia Thaxter. The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should know was not summer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow on the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine, too, which has more than autumnal calmness for the working man: the morning sunshine, which still leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow of the bushy hedgerows. -George Eliot. October is the opal month of the y the month of glory, of ripeness. It is t month. -Henry Ward There is no season when such plea sunny spots may be lighted on, and p pleasant an effect on the feelings, as nov ber. The sunshine is peculiarly genia sheltered places, as on the side of a ban barn or house, one becomes acquai friendly with the sunshine. It seems t kindly and homely nature. And the gr strewn with a few withered leaves looks green and beautiful for them. In su spring Nature is farther from one's sym -Har |