** By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, 

 stillness, peace, refreshment, and delight." 



NEWMAN. 



DECEMBER 



Lighting the garden's gloom, a flow'r-flame's red, 



A year's last rose enshrining faint perfume 

 I see, one Summer-flower 'mid all things dead, 

 Lighting the garden's gloom. 



Yet soon shall pearl-pink Noel-roses bloom 



Amid the snow on tired Nature's bed, 

 Telling a New Year's birth, an old one's doom. 



Last rose, thou dost two diverse seasons wed : 

 Summer with Winter, for upon the tomb 

 Of the dead year thy petals thou dost shed, 



Lighting the garden's gloom. 



(A LAST ROSE.) 



T^\ECEMBER, the last month of the year, brings its utter 

 ^"^ desolation, and everywhere is 



" The rich smell of rotting leaves, 

 And the breath 



Of the fading edges of box beneath, 

 And the year's last rose." 



The warm days, but lately left us, have persuaded many a rose- 

 bush to send forth a bud, which will but wither in its in- 

 fancy ; each bud that was to be a flower will never open to 

 the sunlight, nor give to the air its sealed odour. So silent 

 are these present days, even the robin's song is all but ended ; 

 its notes first gave us warning of Autumn's coming, for its 

 first sweetest song was sung when the earliest of Autumn 

 leaves were falling, and the last flowers of Summer drooped 

 beneath the sky, grey with the Autumn rain. To-day it hops 



295 



