SEPTEMBER 
Earth’s increase, foison plenty, 
Barns and garners never empty : 
Vines, with clustering bunches growing, 
Plants with goodly burthen bowing; 
Spring come to you at the farthest 
In the very end of harvest! 
Scarcity and want shall shun you ; 
Ceres’ blessing so is on you. 
Tempest , IV. i. no. 
HAT glorious month when the “fair tilled glebe** 
is golden with waving grain and the hillsides 
purple with ling or heath, or glinting every gleam of 
gold and red and brown from the perishing bracken ; 
the month of Ceres and her reapers, of harvest-homes 
and rejoicing for the gathering in of the world*s store ; 
the month when earth below and sky above reflect 
and vary in one another Nature*s thousand colour¬ 
ings, and paint them on a background of opal and ruby. 
The autumn flowers are here in full vigour at last. 
In our gardens the great golden sunflowers and lilac 
Michaelmas daisies* are replacing the phloxes, and our 
late summer favourites in the lanes, the scabious, rag¬ 
wort, and harebell, tell us the year’s work is all but 
over, and, as we have said, on moorland and mountain¬ 
side the ling is purpling—a fit lair for the “ whirring 
partridge.** 
There was a time when the genus Erica was sought 
* Called in Warwickshire parlance “ Farewell Mid* 
summers, ’ ’ 
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