Oh, let me plead with thee to have a nook, 

 A garden nook*** 



ERIC MACKAY. 



SEPTEMBER 



^TOTHING is lovelier in Autumn than to behold the 

 ***^ uplands golden with the fern. 



" Gloriously decked with colours royal, 



Bright purple heather and golden fern, 

 Are moorland and down and slope and headland, 



Desolate height and thick haunt of hern. 

 One golden bright in its fading beauty 



One glowing rich in its birth deferred, 

 And long delayed till is almost over 



Sunshine and blossom-time, and is heard 

 Wail of wind scattering leaves and flowers, 

 Forerunner of the cold, white hours." 



No doubt it was on such a day, when walking among 

 heather and fern and ripening berries, Wordsworth, our 

 Nature poet, penned the following 



" How sweet upon this Autumn day 

 The wild-wood fruit to gather, 

 And on my true-love's forehead plant 

 A crest of blooming heather." 



Autumn is the time of the changing of the green fan- 

 shaped leaves of the Virginia creeper a plant that of late 

 years has done much to redeem many a corner from its look 

 of sterility to a picturesqueness only attainable by this cascade 

 of greenery. And how often has it been remarked that it 

 wants but blossoms, of which it is quite bereft, and to be ever- 

 green to be an ideal climber. This beautiful creeper, like many 

 another plant, is more noticeable in the days of its decline 



231 



