222 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



have seen how much of good allegory might be drawn 

 from this view of the fall of the leaf instead of the 

 more dreary view that all is over. Yet I know of 

 none that have so looked on it. Cowper came rather 

 near it in the ' Winter's Walk at Noon,' but he missed 

 it ; and the nearest approach to it that I know is to be 

 found in Homer's well-known lines, o'er] irep (jivWojv, 

 etc., which I will give in the old translation of 

 Chapman : — 



' Like the I'ace of leaves 

 The race of man is, ... . the wind in autumne strowes 

 The earth with old leaves, then the spring the woods with new 

 endowes. ' 



