how weeping spindles, and broad rustling leaves, and
ears half glowing with the crowded corn; the September wind whistles
over their thick-set ranks with whispers of plenty. The staggering
stalks of the buckwheat grow red with ripeness, and tip their tops with
clustering tricornered kernels.

The cattle, loosed from the summer's yoke, grow strong upon the meadows
new-starting from the scythe. The lambs of April, rounded into fulness
of limb, and gaining day by day their woolly cloak, bite at the nodding
clover-heads; or, with their noses to the ground, they stand in solemn,
circular conclave under the pasture oaks, while the noon-sun beats with
the lingering passion of July.

The Bob-o'-Lincolns have come back from their Southern rambles among the
rice, all speckled with gray; and, singing no longer as they did in
spring, they quietly feed upon the ripened reeds that straggle along the
borders of the walls. The larks, with their black and yellow
breastplates, and lifted heads, stand tall upon the close-mown meadow,
and at your first motion of approach spring up, and soar away, and light
again, and with their lifted heads renew the watch. The quails, in
half-grown coveys, saunter hidden through the underbrush that skirts the
wood, and only when you are close upon them, whir away, and drop
scattered under the coverts of the forest.

The robins, long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide
in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed
pigeons dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter at
sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts. The lazy
blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that
her slow steps start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, and
hang high over the carcass of some slaughtered sheep lying ragged upon
the hills.

The ash-trees grow crimson in color, and lose their summer life in great
gouts of blood. The birches touch their frail spray with yellow; the
chestnuts drop down their leaves in brown, twirling showers. The
beeches, crimped with the frost, guard their foliage until each leaf
whistles white in the November gales. The bittersweet hangs its bare and
leafless tendrils from rock to tree, and sways with the weight of its
brazen berries. The sturdy oaks, unyielding to the winds and to the
frosts, struggle long against the approaches of the winter, and in their
struggles wear faces of orange, of scarlet, of