"Alas! for earthly joy, and hope, and love, Thus stricken down, e'en in their holiest hour! What deep, heart-wringing anguish must they prove, Who live to weep the blasted tree or flower. Oh, wo! deep wo to earthly love's fond trust, When all it once has worshiped lies in dust!"
Time glided on--days dawned and waned--weeks came and went--soon months were numbered with the ruins of the past, and when the old year, with sober meekness, took up his bright inheritance of luscious fruits, a pomp and pageant filled the splendid scene. The yellow maize and golden sheaves stood up in the fields, and the fading meadow, like a crushed flower, gave out a dying fragrance to the fresh, cool winds, that, sporting playfully amongst the tree-tops, swept downward from their high communion, and stooped to dally with its sweet decay. Then the apple-boughs were heavily laden with crimson fruit, peeping like roses from their garniture of woven foliage; the purple grape-clusters dotted the creeping vine, half transparent in their tempting lusciousness; the red cherries seemed, in the distance, like the burning brilliancy of a summer sunset struggling through the branches and tangled leaves that intervened; and the downy peach peered provokingly from amongst the sheltering green, where, all the summer long, it had stolen the first blush of saffron-vested Aurora, when seraph hands unbar the gates of morning, and the last ray of golden light that paused at the flame-wrought portals of expiring day to look reluctant back. Another change came over the face of nature, and delicate-footed spring seemed to have come again with her lap full of leaves and blossoms. The trees cast aside their long-worn garniture of green, and flaunted proudly in gorgeous robes of gold and crimson. The blushing rose once more sought the thorny stem that had slept so long desolate; and the changeful-hued touch-me-not looked up smilingly from the pallid grass, where nestled thousands of purple violets peeping out timidly from their shady nooks; and the waning year smiled--smiled as smiles the dying man, when the life-blood quickens in his veins, for almost the last time to linger on the cheek and lip, brighten in the eye, and give a joyous swell to the heart that lies in ruins. The gorgeous pageant went by, and the trees put on their robes of mourning--anon, tossed their huge branches to the sky, leafless and desolate, save where the ivy, creeping gracefully up the twisted trunk, or the sacred mistletoe, luxuriant on the dying bough, wore a fadeless green amidst the desolations that surrounded them. The clear, unsullied sky assumed a deeper, peculiar blue; the night reigned with a clearer, intenser brilliancy, and the thronging stars beamed with an almost unnatural brightness; the cold, hurrying winds awoke from their sluggishness, and took their way over hill and meadow with a dismal tone, like the midnight howl that comes to the ear of the dying with hideous tales of the noisome grave; and the fleecy mass of trooping clouds, driving wildly before every ice-winged impulse of the wintry storm, seemed like sheets of floating snow dotting the vast cerulean. Still another change--the earth was clad in a robe of spotless ermine, and the gray dawn opened her pale eye on iciness and desolation; men hurried to and fro as nature were a plague, and they its victims; the sparkling, tripping, garrulous brooks, whose sweet voices had so long gone up like a spirit's on the air, now sped their way with a faint and death-like gurgle; the laurel, pine, and cedar, disdaining to be poor pensioners on the bounties of a gushing sunshine, or, with a cringing obsequiousness, to yield conformity to the golden mutations of a passing hour, expanded their foliage of living green, unchanged amidst the bleakest ruins of winter, while the stern-browed year, old, wrinkled, and hoary, drew nearer and nearer his death-time. Ere long spring came. As the grim darkness flees before the many-tinted dawn, until at last she stands blushing upon the eastern horizon in perfect beauty, so fled the stern winter before the radiant footsteps of this flower-goddess. At her approach the wooing south-winds swept downward from their sky-built thrones, and stooping to the hill-tops, laid their soft fingers on the expanding buds, stealing a fragrance, and whispering their heaven-taught melody amongst the gnarled old branches; then crept stealthily into the valleys below, and drinking in their rich gush of pleasant sounds, glided back exulting to their high communion. The merry-voiced waters, freed from their icy fetters, and sparkling like a sheet of silver sheen, went dancing and leaping on--on with a winged impetuosity to their ocean home.