
KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 

215 
and sighed, and then remembered that the | drew up to admire, and changed to silver as they 
time would ere long arrive when she must also 
depart. 
She felt that Autumn would soon come and 
sit down to the riper banquet which she left 
behind; and forget the fairer guest who had 
graced that board, and upon whose grave he 
would throw his fallen leaves disregarded. But 
she knew that his time would also come, and grim 
Winter rattle the icicles that hung from his beard, 
as he reigned amid the 
Bare ruined choirs [where late] the sweet birds 
sang. 
But Summer now ruled in all her full-blown 
beauty over earth, and sea, and sky; places that 
before appeared brown and desolate, had caught 
the warm, rose-like shadow that she threw down, 
and were covered with the blush of the crimson 
heather. On the water, the white lily floated, 
like a queen on her green barge, and retired into 
her crystal cabin when the curtains of day were 
drawn. The lady-like woodbine leant her fair 
face over the woodland walk; while the bees 
alighted upon her sun-stained fingers, and fed 
upon the honey which she held in her hand. 
The tall foxgloves stood here and there like 
torch-bearers, and lighted up the shady places 
with a ruby flame; while the rich meadow-sweet 
filled the whole air around with the fragrance 
that streamed from her deep cream-colored bloom. 
The convolvuluses dressed up the hedges with 
their long trails of flowers, that they might still 
look beautiful after the hawthorns had shaken 
off the pearly-tinted buds of May ; even the brown 
banks were gay with the mallows, and hidden 
nooks were lighted with flowering weeds; as if 
Summer, in her boundless wealth, left no spot 
unvisited, no corner without a bell or a blossom, 
for the belted bee to hum over, or the pea-bloom- 
like butterfly to swing upon. She had roofed her 
hall with green, and trained sweet-scented 
creepers around its pillars; then scattered the 
floor with flowers for us to tread upon, the pattern 
of which she showed by golden lights let in here 
and there through the net-work of the boughs. 
Yet all her work had been done silently; the 
silver showers were her threads, and the trembling 
sunbeams her shuttle, which the winds threw 
to and fro. She formed her clouds of the same 
texture. 
Her tall trees were the work of many a day, 
many a night, and many a year. She came and 
went; yet no human eye could tell when she 
began or when she ended, or perceive what she 
had done. The bud came, but no one knew how; 
it opened, no one could tell when; the leaves 
became longer every day, but no human eye 
could see them grow; for she could shelter her- 
self within the rounded dew-drop, and there, 
hidden, carry on her great work. . Those tiny 
stems which the smallest insect could at first 
pierce, at her bidding became harder and thicker 
every day, until at last only the dreaded thunder- 
bolt could rend them ; for it wearied the human 
arm to hack and hew through their gigantic 
limbs. Man wiped the beaded drops from his 
brow, and laid down wearied through trying to 
cut asunder what she had woven from the shrine, 
the shower, and the breeze. The dark clouds 


sailed slowly over her topmost branches; and 
the stars looked brightly down through her 
winding staircase of leaves. 
Then she descended,—and having placed 
| plumes on the heads and trembling drops in the 
ears of the grasses, she diapered the interstices 
between with fanciful patterns of flowers. She 
placed in her shuttle the gold that formed the 
buttercup, and the silver from which she wrought 
the form of the daisy; running with a trembling 
thread the blue of the harebell between, and 
spotting the ground with the scarlet pimpernel. 
The bee came, and made a brazen belt out of the 
yellow of the buttercup ; the butterfly found the 
silver-coloring of his wings in the daisy; the 
dragon-fly stole his deep-blue from the nodding 
harebell; and the tiger-moth stained his wings 
in the blood-red font of the pimpernel; and s0, 
}plumed and full of life) Summer threw her 
works into the air, and smiled at the creation 
which had sprung from her idle moods, when for 
pastime she formed the flowers. A thousand 
little insects crept into the foldings of her leaves, 
and hid themselves among the pollen that fell 
upon the petals. Whatever she touched became 
instinct with life. Not an insect’s egg could 
rest on a leaf that she had spread out without 
feeling a stir of life within it—a restless fluttering 
that shot out into wings, by which the half-un- 
conscious body was at last borne away. Even 
the feathered seeds which blew off at her slightest 
breath, rose into the air and looked about for 
room to alight; and wheresoever they settled 
down, there sprang up anew generation of flowers. 
Time tried in vain to destroy them; he mowed 
them down with his merciless scythe, and when 
they had withered, buried them deep in the earth; 
but his labor was useless! there was an immor- 
tality in whatever Summer had once touched ; 
and from the soil which he upturned another race 
arose, a new family of flowers came to life, and 
desolate places. blushed with beauty. Pity that 
she herself must die ! 
The young birds which she had carefully 
covered in her leafy arbours had long since 
flown, and only the empty nests remained—de- 
serted houses from which the tenants had fled. 
Those that sang to her like little angels amony 
the trees, were now either silent or had ventured 
across the broad seas to search for a younger 
Summer than the one they had left benind. She 
had seen them fly away one after the other, and 
noticed how the trees became silent, and the 
hedgerows hushed, and the deep woods less 
audible ; and the noise of the brooks, whose 
running had hitherto been drowned by the burst- 
ing band that beat time to the rocking of the 
reeds, and the bowing of the bulrushes, and the 
silvery shivering which the willows made, fell 
louder upon her ear; and she caught the low 
lapsing of the smallest ripples that fretted among 
the pebbles, and which she had never heard 
while her feathered friends sang to soothe her. 
The high green chambers in her tallest trees, 
which commanded such a look-out over rounded 
hills and sloping upland, broad moor and flowery 
valley, were empty, for the daughters of music 
had fled. The little robin and the tiny wren 
pecked about and peeped at her, and bid her be 


