An Autumn Reverie 137 



fields and rustling woods, and though the hues of 

 decay become gradually more brilliant, and the leaves 

 dance before the breeze, and the hedgerows redden 

 with hip and haw, and the squirrel is busy among 

 the hazel nuts, dream and reverie travel on uninter- 

 ruptedly, the present, the future, and the might-have- 

 been blended in disorder. But to him who does not 

 seek for it the poem comes at last, suggested perhaps 

 by a trifle a family of jays flying round the thicket 

 with harsh cry and shining plumage, a flock of rooks 

 tumbling in the October air, a party of gleaners in a 

 neighbouring field. Instead of feeling then that ' The 

 Last Load Home,' or any other poem, is an adequate 

 summary of the suggested vision of work done, and 

 the gathered harvest, and the inevitable moral, it does 

 not convey a tithe of what the brook sings as, with 

 soft and ceaseless lullaby, it flows past the village 

 graveyard, where merry harvesters of a bygone time 

 rest like garnered sheaves. No poem that ever was 

 written gives more than a hint of the broken melodies 

 sung by our Ophelia of the Ages moving on to her 

 doom. Nature is always sad to those in communion 

 with her ; and her love-making is but to find a listener 

 for a tale of woe. Even in spring she seems to whisper ; 

 the young lambs, the bourgeoning trees, the insects 

 and the birds, all drain something from a not inex- 

 haustible source, and are indeed but exudations of 

 decay. With her utmost economy and she flings even 



