THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the Autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown; and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie; but cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the briar-rose and the orchis died amid the Summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook in Autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their Winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill—

The South Wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

NOVEMBER BONFIRES.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died-
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side!

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In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept, that one so lovely should have a life so brief.
Yet not unmeet it was, that one like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

NOVEMBER BONFIRES.

SELDOM have I seen anything more striking and impressive in picturesque effect than the celebration of the fifth of November in the Old World villages which dot these Sussex Downs. As the evening drew on, crowds of men and boys began to assemble round a huge pile of faggots and tar-barrels which had been constructed on the highest point of the hill. They chanted at intervals what seemed

to be the refrain of an old English ballad, probably contemporaneous with the Gunpowder Plot itself. By nine o'clock it was pitch dark. A sharp frosty wind blew keenly over the bleak down. Now for the great event of the night. The parson and the squire, for whom we had been waiting, arrived, and were greeted by a hearty cheer, which rang out, in the still night air, with a fulness which only Englishmen can give. The sound was heard in the village far away below us, and the bells struck up from the old church tower with a merry peal. Glimmering lights flashed out here and there, gradually breaking into a broader, brighter glare as the bonfires were lit up in the valley and on the adjacent heights. The clergyman gave a short and appropriate address on the event commemorated, speaking of God's providential care of England in seasons of peril, reprehending the crime contemplated, denouncing popery strongly, yet without bitterness, and calling upon his parishioners to live as

loyal subjects and good Christians. The squire then stepped forward, and igniting a wisp of straw, thrust it into the huge pile, which caught fire rapidly, and soon was all a-flame. The men cheered, the boys danced and shouted, the dogs barked, fireworks cracked and hissed in every direction. What grand masses of light and shade! How the tongues of flame shot up high into the air, and then fell back with magical variation. Ever and anon the

blazing mass would suddenly sink down into some internal crater, and a shower of sparks would fly aloft and seem to lose themselves amongst the stars. How far it is well to retain the memorials of bygone animosities and crimes I do not now stop to ask; but to the inhabitant of a country so spic and span new as America, these records of a remote past perpetuated into the present are strangely impressive.

TWEED-SIDE IN WINTER.

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TWEED-SIDE IN WINTER.

NOVEMBER'S Sky is chill and drear,

November's leaf is red and sere.
Late, gazing down the steepy linn
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen,
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trilled the streamlet through :
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and brier, no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.

No longer Autumn's glowing red
Upon our forest hills is shed;

No more, beneath the evening's beam,
Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam;
Away hath passed the heather-bell
That bloomed so rich on Needpath fell;
Sallow his brow, and russet bare
Are now the sister-heights of Yare.
The sheep, before the pinching heaven,
To sheltered dale and down are driven,
Where yet some faded herbage pines,
And yet a watery sunbeam shines:
In meek despondency they eye
The withered sward and wintry sky,

And far beneath their summer hill,
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill:
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold,
And wraps him closer from the cold;
His dogs no merry circles wheel,
But, shivering, follow at his heel;
A cowering glance they often cast,
As deeper moans the gathering blast.

CALM DECAY.

"Everywhere the spirit of some sad power seems to direct the time: it hides from us the blue heavens; it walks through the fields, and lays the damp ungathered harvest low; it steals the Summer bloom from the infant cheeks; it makes old age shiver to the heart; it goes to the churchyard and chooses many a grave. It is God that goes his yearly round; that gathers up the appointed lives; and, even where the hour is not come, engraves by pain and poverty many a sharp and solemn lesson on the heart."

THE morning mist is cleared away,

Yet still the face of heaven is grey,

Nor yet th' autumnal breeze has stirred the grove.
Faded, yet full, a paler green

Skirts soberly the tranquil scene.

The redbreast warbles round this leafy cove.

Sweet messenger of "calm decay,"
Saluting sorrow as you may,

As one still bent to find or make the best,
In thee, and in this quiet mead
The lesson of sweet peace I read,

Rather in all to be resigned than blest.