October.

THE HARVEST MOON.

IT is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows

Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,

And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

The brown autumn came. Out of doors, it brought to the fields the prodigality of the golden harvest, to the forest, revelations of light, — and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long, meditative evenings.

It was autumn, and incessant

KAVANAGH.

Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples

Burned among the withering leaves.

PEGASUS IN POUND.

Oh! there is something in that voice that reaches The innermost recesses of my spirit.

THE DIVINE TRAGEDY.

OCTOBER 2.

A stout gentleman of perhaps forty-five, round, ruddy, and with a head which, being a little bald on the top, looked not unlike a crow's nest with one egg in it. HYPERION.

He had a way of saying things

That made one think of courts and kings,
And lords and ladies of high degree.

THE RHYME OF SIR CHRISTOPHER, Tales of a Wayside Inn
Patience!... have faith, and thy prayer will be
EVANGELINE

answered!

Lord Bolingbroke, 1678; Rufus Choate, 1799.

OCTOBER 2.

Borromeo, 1538; J. Ritson, 1752.

New shops, with new names over the doors; new streets, with new forms and faces in them; the whole town seemed to have been taken and occupied by a besieging army of strangers.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me

KAVANAGH.

Not the sun that used to be,

Not the tides that used to run.

CHANGED.

His heart was in his work, and the heart

Giveth grace unto every Art.

THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP.

OCTOBER 4.

He was glad to do a good deed in secret, and

yet so near heaven.

I must go forth into the town,
To visit beds of pain and death,

HYPERION.

Of restless limbs, and quivering breath,
And sorrowing hearts and patient eyes
That see, through tears, the sun go down,
But never more shall see it rise.

The poor in body and estate,

The sick and the disconsolate,

Must not on man's convenience wait.

THE GOLDEN Legend.

HIAWATHA

Feet that run on willing errands.

George Bancroft, 1800.

OCTOBER 4.

Malone, 1741.