the crimson on orchard
treasures, mellowed the heart of vineyard clusters, painted the leaves
with hectic glory that reconciled to their approaching fall, smiled on
the chestnuts that burst their burrs to greet her, whispered to the
squirrels that the banquet was ready; kissed into starry bloom blue
asters crowding about her knees, and left the scarlet of her lips on
the kingdom of berries ordained to flush the forest aisles, where
wolfish winds howled, when leaves had rustled down to die, and verdure
was no more.

The Angel of Winter, a sad, mute image, wan as her robes of snow,
stretching white wings to shelter perishing birds huddled on the cold
pall that covered a numb world,--crowned with icicles that clasped her
silver locks, shedding tears that froze upon her marble cheeks;
standing on the universal grave where Nature lay bound in cerements,
hearkening to the dismal hooting of the owl at her feet, the sharp
insistent cry of gray killdees hovering above icy marshes, the wailing
tempest dirge over the dead earth; and while with one benignant hand
she tenderly folded her mantle about the sleepers, the other kindled a
conflagration along the western sky, that reddened and warmed even the
wastes of snow, and when she beckoned, the attendant stars seemed to
circle closer and closer, burning with an added lustre that made night
glorious. Answering her call, the Auroral arch sprang out of the North,
spanning the sky with waving banners of orange and violet flame, that
illumined the Niobe of the Seasons, as she hovered with out-stretched
glittering pinions, and mournful ice-dimmed eyes above her shrouded
dead children.

With returning health, had come to Beryl activity of those artistic
instincts, which for a time, had slumbered in the torpor of despair;
and when her daily task of work had been accomplished, the prisoner
leaned with folded arms on the stone ledge of the window, and studied
every changing aspect of earth and atmosphere. By degrees the old
ambition stirred, and she began to sketch the slow panorama of July
clouds, built of mist and foam into the likeness of domes of burnished
copper, and campaniles of silver; the opaque mountain masses,
stratified along the horizon, leaden in hue, with sullen bluish gorges
where ravening January winds made their lair; the intricate, graceful
tracery of gnaried bare boughs and interlacing twigs, that would serve
as a framework when May hung up her green portieres to screen