Sep- It is no wonder the poets have loved so 



tember. W e\\ this month whose name has in it all the 

 witchery of the North. There is the majesty 

 of the hill-solitudes in it, when the moorlands 

 are like a purple sea. It has the freshness of 

 the dew- white bramble- copses, of the bracken 

 become russet and pale gold, of the wandering 

 frostfire along the highways of the leaf, that 

 mysterious breath whose touch is silent flame. 

 It is the month when the sweet, poignant 

 second-song of the robin stirs the heart as a 

 child's gladness among tears. 'The singer 

 of September,' a Gaelic poet calls it, and 

 many will recall the lovely lines of the old 

 half- forgotten Elizabethan poet on the bird 



" That hath the bugle eyes and ruddy breast 

 And is the yellow autumn's nightingale." 



It is strange how much bird-lore and beast- 

 lore lie with September. The moor- cock, 

 the stag, the otter, the sea-wandering salmon, 

 the corncrake, and the cuckoo and the swift, 

 I know not how many others, have their tale 

 told or their farewell sung to the sound and 

 colour of September. The poets have loved it 

 for the unreturning feet of Summer whose 

 vanishing echoes are in its haunted aisles, and 

 for the mysterious silences of the veiled 

 arrivals of Winter. It is the month of the 

 year's fulflllings — 



238 



