Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/379

Rh high and regular second bank, we climbed up this in haste to get a nearer sight of the autumnal flowers, asters, golden-rod, and yarrow, and the trichostema dichotoma, humble road-side blossoms, and, lingering still, the harebell and the rhexia Virginica. The last, growing in patches of lively pink flowers on the edge of the meadows, had almost too gay an appearance for the rest of the landscape, like a pink ribbon on the bonnet of a Puritan woman. Asters and golden-rods were the livery which nature wore at present. The latter alone expressed all the ripeness of the season, and shed their mellow lustre over the fields, as if the now declining summer's sun had bequeathed its hues to them. It is the floral solstice a little after mid-summer, when the particles of golden light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On every hillside, and in every valley, stood countless asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole race of yellow flowers, like Brahminical devotees, turning steadily with their luminary from morning till night.

I see the golden-rod shine bright, As sun-showers at the birth of day, A golden plume of yellow light, That robs the Day-god's splendid ray. The aster's violet rays divide The bank with many stars for me, And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed, As moon light floats across the sea. I see the emerald woods prepare To shed their vestiture once more, And distant elm-trees spot the air With yellow pictures softly o'er. * *