THE SEQUENCE OF THE SEASONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2669, 10 May 1905, Page 78

THE SEQUENCE OF THE SEASONS.

By a Banker.

To the dwellers in temperate climc-s this earth of ours presents far greater variety and change than to those whose home is in the tropics. The entire year is a continuous round of mutation, eve. varying, ever in a constant state of transition. In the opening days of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere), for twotlirds of the day twilight and dsrkness reign supreme; vegetable nature is dormant and temporarily lifeless, not a vestigei of leaf on the giant forest trees, not a flower to gladden the vales and pastures ; perhaps every river and every lako transmuted into solid ice, and the land robed in crystal snow, or ironbound, as thotigh changed to a-dam-ant. And then succeeds the genial influence of ever-welcome spring. The trees are now mantled in a vivid emerald, and tenanted by innumerable songsters of the woods, causing the welkin to ring and re-echo with their joyous and hilarious melody; the lark, poised high m air, poairs forth its love strophes in a very paroxysm of fervpwr and passion ; and m the shades of the evening the nightingale carols cut its fcxuitant melody in a quiverirg flood of rhythmical and tuneful harmony. The banks and dales are all ag!o-wr with primroses and violets, anemones and wild hyacinths ; while the hedgerows aare garnished and adorned with a luxuriance of perfumed flowers. *

And now conies the richer fulness of summer, when Nature with more lavish bounty clothes the countryside -with other and many-hued. beauties of the floral world, perfuming the air with their redolent aroma, and delighting the eye with their ever-vaaried form. And then, as autumn approaches, the brilliancy of the^s natural .parterres gradually wanes and fades away, until, later on, not a flower remains therein to adorn and to beatitify. But the disappearance of these flower-bedecked glades is well compensated for by the woods and' forests, which now tssiime the. splendour of their autumn garb, all dazzling in its superb richness of colouring : some a brilliant scarlet, others a bu.rnish.ed copper or a lustrous gold, and others a lovely fflend of carmine and amethyst. And the hedgerows, too- are now festooned and garlanded with drapes and tassels of varied berries, as the bright scarlet of the greater bryony, or the rose-pink of the handsome lesser variety, or with clusters or spikes of the orange and pink of the euonymus, the jet black of the prh et, or the dark purple of the sloe. But now winter has once again gripped the land in its icy clasp; the birds are dumb and silent, the leafless trees are gaunt md bare, and a, biting blast from the gelid north, driving the leaden, clouds before it, presages a howling^ numbing snowstorm. And so the cycle of the seasons goes round from year to "year, ever changing, ever following the same sequence. And as the tocsin sounds .the knell of each closing year it brings us to the glad season whea we celebrate the advent of Him who so loved us that He gave His very life that -we might escape condemnation. But that great sacrifice will not avail if we reject His offer of rescue from the wrath to come; or if, forgetting Him, we fatuously live but for the pleasxire3 of this life only.