"I beheld, and, lo, there was no man,

And all the birds of the heavens were fled.

I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness."

Fer. iv. 25, 26.

ARK-VISAGED visitor, who comest here,
Clad in thy mournful tunic, to repeat

(While glooms and chilling rains enwrap thy feet)
The solemn requiem of the dying year;

Not undelightful to my list'ning ear

Sound thy dull showers, as o'er my woodland seat,
Dismal and drear, the leafless trees they beat :
Not undelightful, in their wild career,

Is the wild music of thy howling blasts,

Sweeping the groves' long aisle, while sullen Time
Thy stormy mantle o'er his shoulder casts,
And, rocked upon his throne, with chant sublime,
Joins the full-pealing dirge, and Winter weaves
Her dark sepulchral wreath of faded leaves.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

HE 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.

183

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

ELDOM 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