552 WILD FLOWEBS OF 



walls, windows, or trellis-work, even amidst falling 

 snow ; but there will scarcely be one left by the last 

 day of the month. The " ruler of the inverted year," 

 now makes steady progress the meadows in early 

 morn are white with hoar frost, destroying the last 

 surviving plants and flowers that might have hoped 

 to escape the storm ; then, as the feeble rays of the 

 sickly sun tell upon the crisp grass, rising vapours 

 hang cowering upon the dank meadows, or gloomy 

 arable enclosures, till dampness is condensed upon all 

 created things, rain is precipitated upon the leafless 

 groves in pealing torrents, muddy brooks pour their 

 red rippling waters over the plain, and the swelled 

 rivers break their bounds, and mournfully splash upon 

 the bending hollow pollard willows, ranged in broken 

 ranks upon their borders. As the red inundation 

 still rises, the spoils of autumn are borne upon its 

 waters, and a black line of leaves and sticks marks 

 the current of the river, that swiftly carries onward to 

 the ocean the once gay verdure of the woods, now 

 dark and rotting, as the joys of the past are them- 

 selves swept remorselessly away. So the current of 

 life bears all things along. 



The garden and shrubbery now presents its most 

 desolate aspect, for rampant weeds struggle with the 

 stalks of dead annuals ; all are dying, or so inter- 

 mingled with fallen foliage and wind-driven fragments, 

 as to appear dead, and as yet there is no evident 

 symptoms of revivification 



" No mark of vegetable life is seen, 



No bird to bird repeats the tuneful call, 

 Save the dark leaves of some tall evergreen, 

 Save the lone redbreast on the moss-girt wall." 



