FOOTSTEPS OF THE SEASONS. 191 



times low and plaintive, like the sobbing of some sorrowful spirit, who 

 seeks for sympathy for his woes among the weeping flowers, and then 

 in rich swelling tones, like those fair sounds which echo amid eastern 

 bowers, or, as the hosannahs of worshipping angels, floating over 

 peaceful waters in the pleasant lands of Paradise. Oh! truly, if aught 

 of that holy music which enraptured our first parents in Eden has 

 been at all preserved, the song of the nightingale is indeed a fragment. 

 And now, as the months wear on, and May comes with its miles and 

 miles of snowy hawthorn blossoms, the gentle Spring, so loved and 

 greeted, must resign her inheritance to her devoted sister — Summer. 

 And so the Seasons keep their whirling round, and form the cycle of 

 the changing year. The Seasons glide into each other noiselessly, as 

 light and darkness at dawning or at nightfall. From the bleak Winter 

 comes the budding Spring, bursting as it were from the obdurate 

 granite of a frozen world to dissolve the death-spell, and to replenish 

 all things with new beauty and with life. And when Summer comes, 

 she will find the earth all dight with flowers, the trees proud and ex- 

 ulting for the green drapery wnich they wear upon their lusly arms, 

 and every ]v\\ and dale echoing a happy, happy welcome. Now 

 fainter and faiiiter echoes the voice of Spring as she turns aside, sing- 

 ing as she quits the scene — 



"The Summer is hastening, on soft wings borne, 

 Ye may press the grape, ye may bind the corn ! 

 For me, I depart to a brighter shore ; 



Ye are marked by care, ye are mine no more. . 



I go where the loved, who have left you, dwell, 

 And the flowers are not Death's :— fare ye well, farewell!" 



Mrs. Hemans. 



Spring, Summer, and Autumn are the twin sisters of seasonal 

 beauty, and each has consigned to her dulies and labours of love and 

 missions of fruition and loveliness. When Spring gazes for the last time 

 upon the green hills where she has been tripping with her sih er feet and 

 sees ihe constellated flowers which she has sprinkled, like "litteiing 

 dust, over every glen and glade, she sheds a tear of mute sorrow, that 

 she must leave a world which her own sunny fingers have made so 

 redolent of beauty; and her work being done, she resigns her scentre 

 to Ihe golden-haired Summer, and departs to her own fiovveiy iiome 

 till she shall be required once more to toilthvouQ,h ullnding sleet, and 

 cover the bosom of the frost-rent earth wiUi verdure, and to awaken 



