238 Summer's Afterglow 



eye, and oppressive with sultry heat and aggressive 

 insects, are now transformed with new splendours 

 of colour, and filled with a fresh and cleaner air. 

 A single hanging bough newly washed with gold, or 

 a single stem of bracken-fronds flaming by the 

 margin of the wood, will alter the whole appearance 

 of its surroundings, and delight the eye with the 

 beauty and completeness of the change. Often 

 the flowers of August and September fill the garden 

 beds and borders through many days of October 

 with a lavish brightness which seems hardly lessened 

 by decay. Many walls are still thickly hung with 

 roses, which will not all have vanished when St. 

 Martin's Summer tinges the elm-tops with a frailer 

 and more ethereal brightness a month later. In 

 many gardens the tall dahlias still stand unstricken, 

 and the heliotrope is unblackened by the frost ; and 

 it is not till that ill-fated morning when we rise and 

 see the dahlias hanging in limp and oozy corruption 

 that the stroke of autumn seems truly to have 

 fallen in the garden world. 



The wild flowers of St. Luke's Summer are fewer 

 and less vigorous than those of the garden ; among 

 our wild British flora there is no such vigorous 

 natural outburst in late August and September as 

 fills the tended garden with its stateliest and almost 

 its brightest display. Yet there is a deep and 

 characteristic charm about the last unexpected 

 survivors of the summer flowering-time in the 

 pastures, commons, and lanes ; the last rose of 

 summer is not more beautiful in the garden than 

 the last harebell or foxglove on the rocky bank 



