THE GARLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3339, 13 March 1918, Page 47

THE GARLAND.

FOR THE QUIET HOUR. No. 237. Br Duncan Wright, Dunedin. AUTUMN LEAVES. Nearly everybody who reads can remember Milton's lines in "Paradise Lost" : Thick as autumnal leaves that strow "the brooks In Vallambrosa. But how many can recall the beautiful verses by Airs Browning ? Go, sit upon the lefty hill, aluo turn your eyes around Where waving woods and waiers wild .do hymn an autumn sound. The summer sun is faint in them— The summer flowers depart— Sit still—as all transform d to stone, your musing heart. How there yoiv sat in summer time May yet ba in your mind; And how you heard the green woocta sing Beneath the freshening wind. Tho' the same wind now blows around, y.ou would its blast recall;For every breath that stirs the trees Doth cause a leaf to fall. Oh! like that wind is all the mirth That flesh and dust impart; - We cannot bear its visitings When change is on the heart. Gay words and jests may make us smile When Sorrow is asleep; But other things must make us smile When Sorrow bids up weep! The dearest hands that clasp our hands,— Their presence may be o'er; The dearest voice that meets our ear, That tone may come no more! Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth, Which once refreshed our mind/ Shall come,—as, on those sighing woods, The chilling autumn wind. Hear not the wind —view not the woods; Look out o'er vale and hill: In spring, the sky encircled them — The sky is round them still. Come autumn's scathe—come winter's cold)— Come change—and human fate! Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound _ Can ne'er be desolate. A well-known French author has something to eay on what he calls "The Moral Characteristic of Autumn:. "A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives—all bear secret relations to our destinies."

I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility—Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God,—the right shall be the right Andi other than the wrong, while He endures. I trust in my, own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward,—Nature's good And God's. —Browning. "The impression," says Alison, "we feel from the scenery of autumn is accompanied by much'exercise of thought; the leaves then begin to fade from the trees; the flowers and shrubs, with which the fields were adorned in the summer months, decay; the woods and groves are silent; the sun himself seems gradually to withdraw his light, or to become enfeebled in his power. Who is there who, at this season, does not feel his mind impressed with a sentiment of melancholy; or who is able to resist that current of thought which, from such appearances of decay, so naturally leads him to the solemn imagination of that inevitable fate which is to bring on alike the decay of life, of empire, and of Nature itself? ' The year lies dying in this evening light; The poet, musing in autumnal woods, Hears melancholy sighs. Among the wither'd leaves. Not so! but like a spirit glorified, The angel of the year departs; lays down His robes, once green in spring, Or bright with summer's blue; And, having done his mission on the earth— Filling ten thousand vales with golden com, Orchards with rosy fruit, And scattering flowers around— He lingers for a moment, in the west, With the declining sun, sheds over all A pleasant, farewell smile— And so returns to God. To Rev. R. P. Downes, LL.D., we are indebted for our next paragraph: "One of the most successful paintings in the Royal Academy some years ago was described in the catalogue as 'Autumn Leaves.' In the foreground of the picture was a heap of pale, faded leaves about to be consumed by a fire, the smoke from which could be seen faintly curling up from the ground. Two girls are standing bv the heap, watching the progress of destruction, their forms tinged by the brightness of the setting sun. They were but simple elements thus blended together to form what of the first art critics of the age styled 'the most poetical work the painter had yet conceived.' Yet no one could gaze upon the painting without feeling as much its happy suggestiveness as its felicitous execution. "As we walk through wood and lane at this autumn season there arc many lessons taught us by tho fallen leaf. And foremost of these is the evidence afforded of Divine power and wisdom. Not long since, the tree from whence that leaf lias fallen was bare and leafless. All through the cold and dreary days and nights of winter it had stretched its gaunt arms upwards, as if praying for a covering. The hoar frost hung in myriad forms of

beauty on the naked branches, and, as the sunshine fell upon it, it all dissolved and left the tree still bare and dark against the noon. At night the keen wind whistled through the leafless boughs, and by its melancholy music added u> the dreariness of winter. "But the spring came, and with it life. Leaves which were but tender germs, shrinking from the chilling frosts of the early year, soon clothed the year with beauty. The arms, stretched aloft as if in prayer, now gently waved themselves in exultation, while the gentle rustle of the new-born leaves was borne upon the breeze like sweetest melody to heaven. How great the miracle that gives such life as this!" Sweet Sabbath of the year! "While evening lights decay, Thy parting steps inethinks I hear Steal from the world away. Amid thy silent bowers, 'Tis sad, but sweet, to dwell; "Where falling leaves audi cLrcoping flowers Around me breathe farewell. A deep and crimson streak Thy dying leaves disclose; As on consumption's waning cheek 'Mid ruin blooms the rose. Thy scene each viaion brings Of beauty in decay; Of fair and. early faded things Too exquisite to stay. > Of joys that come no more; Of flowers whose bloom is fled; Of farewells wept, upon the shore j Of friends estranged or dead. Of all that now may seem To memory's tearful eye The vanish'd beauty of a dream, O'er which we gaze and sigh! —James Montgomery. Edith Jenkinson has a pretty article entitled "Autumn Blue and Gold" from which I now quote, arid I feel sure you will prize her suggestive words : "So brief a time it seems since the vernal green, woven through the delicate looms of April, shimmered like a silken thread caught amongst the forest branches, so brief a time since the young summer lay upon the waiting earth her miracle of flowers." [The reader will, of course, understand that all these references apply specially to the Old Land; and not always to our sunny islands of the Southern seas]. "But yesterday, I saw the golden sunrise of the daffodils wild in the March winds, and heard, with thrill of spring's elation, the first song of the meadow-lark, and the morning song of the thrush amongst the blossom; and now the nests which the protecting care of the summer, who loved her singers, had hidden lie exposed and deserted, and there is silence in the wilderness of branches, save here and.there in singular sweetness, the heartsong of a robin. In the lark's song there is a joy touched with the radiance of hope j in the song of the robin there is all the sweetness of love and sadness of it, and the wistfulness of regret. AH the love and the longing and the sadness of life fathered in a brave bird-heart, which has nown the joy of summer and has no fear of the hand 'of winter, and which seeks no shelter save the snow-burdened branches of his native home. "Here and there in the lanes gleams the glittering gold of ragwort, and upon the forest ways and upon the rocky hillslopes and amongst the rough grey, stones of the moorlands there are azure drifts of tissue harebells delicate as the RAIN-SOFT RIFTS OF AUTUMN SKY." SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET may here be noted : DESCRIPTION -OF AUTUMN. That time of year thou mayst in me behold. "When yellow leaves, or none,, or few, clo boughs which, shake against the Bare 'ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet In J tloTseest tne twilight of such a day, As after sunset fadeth m the west, Which by and by black night dbtli take away, Death's second self, that ■ seals up all in In ml? thou seest the glowing of such Are, That on the ashes of his youth doth he As on the death-bed whereon it mus. expire Consumed with that which it was nouns* d This b7 t'hou perceiv'st, which makes thy love well which thou must leave ere long.