is supposed to love her, with something of Sep- 

 ecstasy perhaps, certainly with underglow of tember. 

 passion : ask those in whom the imagination is 

 as a quickening and waning' but never absent 

 flame : ask this man who travels from month 

 to month seeking what he shall never find, or 

 this woman whose memories and dreams are 

 many, howsoever few her hopes . . . and the 

 chance will be that if asked to name the month 

 of the heart's love, it will be September. I 

 do not altogether know why this should be so, 

 if so it is. There is that in June which has a 

 time-defying magic : May has her sweet affini- 

 ties with Spring in the human heart : in April 

 are the flutes of Pan : March is stormy with 

 the clarions of the winds : October can be wild 

 with all wildness or be the calm mirror of the 

 passing of the loveliness of the green -world. 

 There is not a month that has not its own 

 signal beauty, so that many love best February, 

 because through her surge of rains appear days 

 of blue wonder, with the song of the missel- 

 thrush tost like spray from bare boughs — or 

 November, because in the grey silence one 

 may hear the fall of the sere leaves, and see 

 mist and wan blueness make a new magic 

 among deserted woods — or January, when all 

 the visible world lies in a white trance, strange 

 and still and miraculous as death transfigured 



235 



