. . . .
"Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent
With the same colors, for to me
A richer sky than all is lent,
While fades my dream-like company.
"Our skies glow purple, but the wind
Sobs chill through green trees and bright graas,
To-day shines fair, and lurk behind
The times that into winter pass.
"So fair we seem, so cold we are,
So fast we hasten to decay,
Yet through our night glows many a star,
That still shall claim its sunny day."
So sang a Concord poet once.
There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still later
flowers, which abide with us the approach of winter. There is
something witch-like in the appearance of the witch-hazel, which
blossoms late in October and in November, with its irregular and
angular spray and petals like furies' hair, or small ribbon
streamers. Its blossoming, too, at this irregular period, when
other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as blossoms, looks
like witches' craft. Certainly it blooms in no garden of man's.
There is a whole fairy-land on the hillside where it grows.
Some have thought that the gales do not at present waft to the
voyager the natural and original fragrance of the land, such as
the early navigators described, and that the loss of many
odoriferous native plants, sweet-scented grasses and medicinal
herbs, which formerly sweetened the atmosphere, and rendered it
salubrious, - by the grazing of cattle and the rooting of swine,
is the source of many diseases which now prevail; the earth, say
they, having been long subjected to extremely artificial and
luxurious modes of cultivation, to gratify the appetite,
converted into a stye and hot-bed, where men for profit increase
the ordinary decay of nature.
