AUTUMN. 119 



leave November with a " burning bush " of scarlet berries hitherto half- 

 hidden in the leafage. Now, too, the copses of witch-hazel bedeck them- 

 selves, and are yellow with their tiny ribbons. December's name is writ- 

 ten in wreaths of snow upon the withered stalks of slender weeds and 

 rushes, which soon lie bent and broken in the lap of January, crushed 

 beneath their winter weight. And in fulfilment of the cycle, February 

 sees the swelling buds of willow, with their restless pussies eager for the 

 spring, half creeping from their winter cells. 



The October day is a dream, bright and beautiful as the rainbow, and 

 as brief and fugitive. The same clouds and the same sun may be with 

 us on the morrow, but the rainbow will have gone. There is a destroyer 

 that goes abroad by night ; he fastens upon every leaf, and freezes out 

 its last drop of life, and leaves it on the parent stem, pale, withered, and 

 dying. 



Then come those closing clays of dissolution, the saddest of the year, 

 when all nature is filled with phantoms, and the gaunt and naked trees 

 moan in the wind — every leaf a mockery, every breeze a sigh. The air 

 seems weighed with a premonition of the dreariness to come. The land- 

 scape is darkened in a melancholy monotone, and death is written every- 

 where. You may walk the woods and fields for hours without a gleam 

 of comfort or a cheering sound. We hear, perhaps, the hollow roll of the 

 woodpecker upon some neighboring tree ; but even he is clad in mourn- 

 ing : it is a muffled drum, and the resounding limb is dead. You sit 

 beneath the old oak-tree, but it is a lifeless rustle that grates upon your 

 ear, while you listen half beseechingly for some cheering note from the 

 robins in the thicket near; but they are coy and silent now, and their 

 flierlit is toward the southern hills. A villanous shrike must needs come 

 upon the scene : he alights upon a limb near by, with blood upon his 

 beak. Murder is in his eye, and his mission here is death. And now 

 we hear a noisy crow o'erhead : he perches upon a neighboring tree in 

 hungry scrutiny. And what is he but carrion 's bird, that revels in decay 

 and death, with raiment black as a funeral pall ? In the cold gray sky 

 we see their scattered flocks blowing- in the wind with sidelong flight, 

 and in the field below that mocking cadaver, the man of straw, shaking 

 his flimsy arms at them in wild contortions. 



There is a hopeless despondency abroad in all the air, in which the 

 summer medleys of the birds taunt us with their memories. We yearn 

 for one such joyful sound to break the gloomy reverie. But what bird 



