[XI.]
The Wood and the Withered Leaves—Statues—Sun-dials—The Snow—Plans for the Spring—Conclusion.
November 7.—The soft autumn weather still spares what flowers the rains have left us, and here and there are signs as if of another spring. Violets along the grass walks, Strawberries in flower, and to-day a little yellow Brier Rose blossoming on an almost leafless spray, remind us of the early months of the year that is no more. But here, too, are some of the flowers of November. The Arbutus has again opened its bunches of waxen pink, and the Chrysanthemums are again blooming on the shrubbery beds. The year has all but completed its circle since first I wrote these notes, and I speak to-day of the flowers, the same, yet not the same, as those of which I wrote eleven months ago.
The trees have lost nearly every leaf, and our little wood is bare as the wood wherein poor Millevoye, so soon to die, once strolled when
"De la dépouille de nos bois
L'automne avait jonché la terre;
Le bocage était sans mystère
Le rossignol était sans voix."
"The autumn's leafy spoil lay strewn
The forest paths along;
The wood had lost its haunted shade,
The nightingale his song."
Had there been in happier days a "mystère" beyond the charm of waving branches and whispering leaves?
Another French poem on a withered leaf is better known, for it was Macaulay who translated Arnault's verses, and rendered the last three lines so perfectly:—
"Je vais où va toute chose,
Où va la feuille de Rose,
Et la feuille de Laurier."
"Thither go I, whither goes
Glory's laurel, Beauty's rose."
Among my ideas—I cannot call it plan, for my mind is not quite made up about it—I half fancy putting up a statue of some sort in a nook in the little wood, where the Beeches grow the tallest and the Elders are the thickest. Such things were once common, and then they got so common, and often so out of place, that they became absurd. Every villa garden had its statue and its rockery.