FALL OF THE LEAF. 83 



little wood is bare as the wood wherein poor 

 Millevoye, so soon to die, once strolled when 



" De la depouille de nos bols 

 L'automne avait jonche la terre ; 

 Le bocage etait sans mystere 

 Le rossignol etait sans voix." 



" The autumn's leafy spoil lay strewn 



The forest paths along ; 

 The wood had lost its haunted shade, 

 The nightingale his song." 



Had there been in happier days a " mystere " 

 beyond the charm of waving branches and whis- 

 pering leaves ? 



Another French poem on a withered leaf is 

 better known, for it was Macaulay who translated 

 Arnault's verses, and rendered the last three lines 

 so perfectly : 



" Je vais ou va toute chose, 

 Oil va la feuille de Rose, 

 Et la feuille de Laurier." 



" Thither go I, whither goes 

 Glory's laurel, Beauty's rose." 



Among my ideas I cannot call it plan, for my 

 mind is not quite made up about it I half fancy 

 putting up a statue of some sort in a nook in the 

 little wood, where the Beeches grow the tallest and 

 the Elders are the thickest. Such things were once 

 common, and then they got so common, and often 



G 2 



