, 44 My fellow-creatures too say 'Come!' And stones, though speechless, are not dumb." VAUGHAN "And the need of a world of men for me." ROBERT BROWNING OLD OCTOBER Hail, old October, bright and chill, Come, friend, my fire is burning bright, How clear it glows! (there's frost to-night,) You've been to see 'King John." You've seen But what on earth does Shakespeare mean Be mine the Tree that feeds the fire! The sentry sun, that glared so long Shine on the kangaroo, thou sun! Thomas Constable. Winter Nights NOW winter nights enlarge The number of their hours; And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine! Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love, While youthful revels, masques, and Courtly sights, Sleep's leaden spells remove. This time doth well dispense Much speech hath some defence, All do not all things well: Some measures comely tread, Some knotted riddles tell, Some poems smoothly read. The summer hath his joys, And winter his delights ; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, Thomas Campion. The Preludings THE preludings of Winter are as beautiful as those of the Spring. In a grey December day, when, as the farmers say, it is too cold to snow, his numbed fingers will let fall doubtfully a few star-shaped flakes the snowdrops or the anemones that harbinger his more assured reign. Now, and now only, may be seen, heaped on the horizon's eastern edge, those "blue clouds" from forth which Shakespeare says that Mars "doth pluck the masoned turrets." Sometimes also, when the sun is low, you will see a single cloud trailing a flurry of snow along the southern hills in a wavering fringe of purple. And when at last the real snowstorm comes, it leaves the earth with a virginal look on it that no other of the seasons can rival, compared with which, indeed, they seem soiled and vulgar. And what is there in nature so beautiful as the next morning after such confusion of the elements? Night has no silence like this of a busy day. All the batteries of noise are spiked. We see the movement of life as a deaf man sees it, a mere wraith of the clamorous |