Design and form is the very soul of a dressed garden," 



SIR GARDNER WILKINSON. 



NOVEMBER 



Red fruit upon the wall, grown over-ripe with sun. 



Brown leaf in golden setting of leaf-fall 

 Begems the ground, tired with its mission well-nigh done 



Red fruit upon the wall. 



Grey rain on river and the grey mists' pall. 



On high a lifeless sky strewn with clouds dark and dim, 

 Sad woods wherein no wild-bird voices call. 



Old year, the last length of thy race is all but run ; 



Last flowers hang drooping, but the last of all 

 To stay, some overlooked and over-ripe with sun 



Red fruit upon the wall. 



leaves are falling in greater profusion, but the fall 

 has reached its climax, for the cold wind and mist and 

 rain has whispered to them of Winter. Every lane that we 

 found so cool in Summer with the overshading foliage when 

 the Summer land was filled with shimmering haze, has changed 

 its many mingled perfumes that came from the hedgerow 

 blossoms and bank-set herb, for that of decaying leaves. No 

 more are our favourite ways lit with the clear leaf-light, but 

 are filled with the smoke from woodland fires. It is interest- 

 ing to watch the fall of the leaves as they drop from the 

 different trees, each in their own peculiar way, each dyed in 

 their individual colour. The leaf of the ash falls down 

 heavily, almost unchanged in hue ; yet how quickly to turn 

 black when fallen. The birch, elm, and beech, and almost all 

 the other trees, give back to Nature their leaves in vivid tints, 

 flying in the air, wafted far in their fall. 



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