142 Autumn 



pure face of a girl. Wealth I trow looks in but 

 seldom, she has so many lovers ; and Fame not oftener, 

 for the door is locked to her brazen-faced usurping 

 sister Notoriety ; but Pleasure, the fairest of the three, 

 is a constant visitor. She will sit by me for hours 

 as I recall what constant playmates we were when 

 children, and how she carried her boy lover to wood, 

 and rill, and river, and romped with him on banks 

 yellow with primroses, and among the meadow daisies 

 and buttercups. ' Do you remember the young 

 thrushes on the banks of the leafy burn that divides 

 the Dene ? ' she will ask, or ' Have you ever had such 

 angling as when you and I caught our first minnows, 

 and our very earliest perch swam forward with his 

 red fins and took the bait ? ' So she will prattle on 

 for hours together, till I forget that I sit in an arm- 

 chair by the fire, and am a boy again, wandering over 

 stony fields above which the black and white pewits 

 fly and shriek, or watch a red squirrel scale the 

 beeches while the lazy cawing of the rooks floats down 

 the air. 



The sun sets as he used to, but with far more peace 

 and glory and a multiplied wealth of golden clouds, 

 and the summer wind blows sweet and faint. For 

 there is nothing my enchantress cannot reproduce at 

 will, from the ditch with its sticklebacks and the over- 

 hanging hawthorn where the greenfinches built, to the 

 river, the ruin, and the ferry. And because of the 

 alternately glowing and disappearing vision of these 



