Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie,

In all the world of busy life around No thought of them; in all the bounteous sky No drop, for them, of kindly influence found. Soon o'er their heads blithe1 April airs shall sing, A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold, The green buds glisten in the dews of Spring, And all be vernal rapture as of old.

John Keble: 1792-1866.

(See page 34.)

A TRANQUIL DAY IN AUTUMN.
WHY blow'st thou not, thou wint'ry wind,
Now every leaf is brown and sere,
And idly droops, to thee resign'd,

The fading chaplet of the year?

Yet wears the pure aërial sky

Her summer veil, half drawn on high,
Of silvery haze, and dark and still
The shadows sleep on every slanting hill.
How quiet shows the woodland scene!
Each flower and tree, its duty done,
Reposing in decay serene,

Like weary men when age is won,
Such calm old age as conscience pure
And self-commanding hearts ensure,
Waiting their summons to the sky,
Content to live, but not afraid to die.

John Keble: 1792-1866.
(See page 34.)

THE MATRON YEAR.

THE leaves that made our forest pathways shady
Begin to rustle down upon the breeze;

The year is fading, like a stately lady
Who lays aside her youthful vanities:

1 blithe—joyous.

Yet, while the memory of her beauty lingers,
She cannot wear the livery of the old,
So Autumn comes, to paint with frosty fingers,
Some leaves with hues of crimson and of gold.
The Matron's voice fill'd all the hills and valleys
With full-toned music, when the leaves were young;
While now, in forest dells and garden-alleys,
A chirping, reedy song at eve is sung;

Yet sometimes, too, when sunlight gilds the morning,
A carol bursts from some half-naked tree,
As if, her slow but sure decadence scorning,
She woke again the olden melody.

With odorous May-buds, sweet as youthful pleasures,
She made her beauty bright and debonair :1
But now the sad earth yields no floral treasures,
And twines no roses for the Matron's hair:
Still can she not all lovely things surrender;
Right regal is her drapery even now,-

2

Gold, purple, green, inwrought with every splendour,
And clustering grapes in garlands on her brow!
In June, she brought us tufts of fragrant clover
Rife 3 with the wild bee's cheery monotone,
And, when the earliest bloom was past and over,
Offer'd us sweeter scents from fields new-mown:
Now upland orchards yield, with pattering laughter,
Their red-cheek'd bounty to the groaning wain,
And heavy-laden racks go creeping after,

Piled high with sheaves of golden-bearded grain.
Erelong, when all to love and life are clinging,
And festal holly shines on every wall,
Her knell shall be the New-Year bells outringing ;
The drifted snow, her stainless burial-pall:
She fades and fails, but proudly and sedately,
This Matron Year, who has such largess given,—
Her brow still tranquil, and her presence stately,
As one who, losing earth, holds fast to heaven!

4

AUTUMN.

THE Autumn is old,

The sere leaves are flying ;-
He hath gather'd up gold,
And now he is dying ;-
Old age, begin sighing!

The vintage is ripe,
The harvest is heaping;
But some that have sow'd
Have no riches for reaping
Poor wretch, fall a weeping!

The year's in the wane,
There is nothing adorning,
The night has no eve,

And the day has no morning ;

Cold winter gives warning.

The rivers run chill,

The red sun is sinking,

And I am grown old,

And life is fast shrinking

Here's enow for sad thinking!

Thomas Hood: 1798-1845.

The life of Thomas Hood was a continuous conflict with adverse circumstances and ill-health. Yet he is most widely known as a humorous writer. But his serious work shows him to have been a true poet. His best verses are marked by intense pathos,-by pure and exquisite sentiment, and by fertile imagination. His diction is always in harmony with the nature of his theme.

AUTUM N.

(From an Ode.)

WHERE is the pride of Summer, the green prime,—
The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three
On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime
Trembling,—and one upon the old oak tree!

Where is the Dryad's1 immortality?— Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through In the smooth holly's green eternity.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard,

The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;
The swallows all have wing'd across the main ;
But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.
Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone With the last leaves for a love-rosary, While all the wither'd world looks drearily, Like a dim picture of the drowned past

In the hush'd mind's mysterious far-away, Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last Into that distance, grey upon the grey.

Thomas Hood: 1798-1845.

TO AUTUMN.

(See page 70.)

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel-shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

1 Dryades-deities who presided over woods: wood-nymphs. 2 rosary-a string of beads for counting prayers. Hence a love-rosary would be for remembrance of all the beloved.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath1 and all its twinèd flowers; And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows,3 borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 4
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats: 1795-1821. (See page 47.)

CHRISTMAS-TIME.

HEAP on more wood!-the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,

We'll keep our Christmas merry still.

And well our Christian sires of old

Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.

1 swath-line of grass or corn in harvesting.

2 barred clouds-long streaks of cloud that hold the evening sunshine.

3 sallows-river-side shrubs of the willow kind, 4 bourn-boundary, a sheep-fold,