The autumnal dress of a man in the fourteenth century is introduced, from the transcript of an illumination, in a manuscript which supplied the Spring and Summer dress of that age, before presented.
And here as suitable to the season may be subjoined some lines by a correspondent.
Autumnal Feelings.
For the Every-Day Book.
The flowers are gone, the trees are bare,
There is a chillness in the air,
A damp that in the spirit sinks,
Till the shudd’ring heart within me shrinks:
Cold and slow the clouds roll past,
And wat’ry drops come with the blast
That moans, amid the poplars tall,
A dirge for the summer’s funeral.
Every bird to his home has gone,
Save one that loves to sing alone
The robin;—in yon ruin’d tree
He warbles sweetly, mournfully
His shrill note comes upon the wind,
Like a sound of an unearthly kind;
He mourns the loss of his sunny bowers,
And the silent haunts of happy hours.
There he sits like a desolate thing,
With a dabbled breast and a dripping wing,
He has seen his latent joys decline,
Yet his heart is lighter far than mine;
His task is o’er—his duty done,
His strong-wing’d race on the wind have gone,
He has nothing left to brood upon;
He has still the hope of a friendly crumb
When the wintry snow over earth shall come,
And a shelter from the biting wind,
And the welcome looks of faces kind.
I wander here amid the blast,
And a dreary look I backward cast;
The best of my years I feel are fled,
And I look to the coming time with dread
My heart in a desert land has been,
Where the flower of hope alone was green;
And little in life’s decline have I
To expect from kindred’s sympathy.
Like the leaves now whirl’d from yonder spray,
The dreams I have cherish’d day by day,
On the wings of sorrow pass away.
Yet I despair not—time will bring
To the plumeless bird a new bright wing,
A warmer breeze to the now chill’d flower,
And to those who mourn a lighter hour;
A gay green leaf to the faded tree,
And happier days, I trust, to me.
‘Twas best that the weeds of sorrow sprung
With my heart’s few flowers, while yet ’twas young,
They can the sooner be destroy’d,
And happiness fill their dreary void.
S. R. J.