" The shadows on the garden walk 

 Are frayed with rifts of silver light/' 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. 



AUGUST 



" The leaves caught gold against the sun, 

 Where the bluest air begun. 

 In the mute August afternoon 

 They trembled to some undertone 

 Of music in the silver air ; 

 Great pleasure was it to be there 

 Till green turned duskier, and the moon 

 Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair." 



SWINBURNE. 



T\7"HEN the dahlia reigns Queen of the garden, when the 

 first notes of the robin are heard, sounding sweetly 

 through the Autumn rain, it is then we know that Summer is 

 merging into the mellow season. The hollyhocks have almost 

 spent their fair blossoms; the apples are gleaming silvery- 

 green and rosy-red amid the dark foliage. The asters, too, 

 make gay the garden with their many-coloured and brilliant 

 rosette-like blossoms ; but the most charming flower that 

 brings us back the visions of early Autumn is the aftermath of 

 the wisteria. How its bunches of lilac blossoms scent the 

 air, and, as we view it in the noon sunlight, we can hardly 

 believe that it is the end of Summer ! 



The ending of Summer means orchard trees heavily laden 

 with mellowing fruit, and to most of us the season of ripened 

 seed the end of every flower's mission. Regarding this last 

 sentence Ruskin says I think it is to be found in his " Pros- 

 erpina" "The flower exists for its own sake, not for the 

 fruit's sake. The production of the fruit is an added honour 



is a granted consolation to us for its death." 



198 



