ralities about flowery wreaths, and fragrant zephyrs, and genial
rays, and fresh verdure, and vernal airs, and ambrosial dews!

But the year goes on. Our fitful and capricious spring passes by, and
summer takes its place. But our New-England summer is not like the
summer of Thomson and Cowper, and images drawn from English poetry and
transplanted here would be out of place; and our faithful interpreter of
American Nature takes nothing at second-hand. How correctly he
delineates the characteristic features of our glorious month of June!

"There, through the long, long summer hours,
The golden light should lie,
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale close beside my cell;
The idle butterfly
Should rest him here, and there be heard
The housewife-bee and humming-bird."

The _housewife_-bee is an expressive epithet. Does it involve a double
meaning, and insinuate that as a bee carries a sting, so women who are
stirring, notable, and good housekeepers have something sharp in their
natures?

Next comes midsummer with its fervid and overpowering heats, which find
in our poet also an accurate delineator.

"It is a sultry day: the sun has drunk
The dew that lay upon the morning grass;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint
And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved."

But our radiant and many-colored autumn is Bryant's favorite season, and
some of his most beautiful and characteristic passages are those which
paint its hues of crimson and purple, and the vaporous gold of its
atmosphere. Such is the number of these passages that it is difficult to
make a selection of one or two for quotation. Here is one from "Autumn
Woods."

"Let in through all the trees,
Come the strange rays; the forest-depths are bright;
Their sunny-colored foliage, in the breeze,
Twinkles like beams of light.