Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/380

374 No more the water-lily's pride In milk-white circles swims content, No more the blue-weed's clusters ride And mock the heavens' element. * * Autumn thy wreath and mine are blent With the same colors, for to me A richer sky than all is lent, While fades my dream-like company. Our skies glow purple, but the wind Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass, To-day shines fair, and lurk behind The times that into winter pass. So fair we seem, so cold we are, So fast we hasten to decay, Yet through our night glows many a star, That still shall claim its sunny day."

So sang a Concord poet once.

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still later flowers, which abide with us the approach of winter. There is something witch-like in the appearance of the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in October and in November, with its irregular and angular spray and petals like furies' hair, or small ribbon streamers. Its blossoming, too, at this irregular period, when other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as blossoms, looks like witches' craft. Certainly it blooms in no garden of man's. There is a whole fairy-land on the hill-side where it grows.

Some have thought that the gales do not at present waft to the voyager the natural and original fragrance of the land, such as the early navigators described, and that the loss of many odoriferous native plants, sweet-scented