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Never a thrill of Romeo had he known; he was but a melancholy Jaques of the forest with a ruder philosophy, lacking the bitter-sweet flavour of experience that tempered the veteran years of the rugged ranger of Arden. And now in his sere and yellow leaf one scornful look from the eyes of Panchita O'Brien had flooded the autumnal landscape with a tardy and delusive summer heat.

Since Love within my heart made nest, With the fond trust of brooding bird, I find no all-embracing word To say how deeply I am blest. Though wintry clouds are in the air And the dead leaves unburied lie, Nor open is the violet's eye, I see new beauty everywhere. I walk beneath the naked trees, Where wild streams shiver as they pass, Yet in the sere and sighing grass I hear a murmur as of bees,

A few paces beyond him a buttress extended and, rounding it, she found a triangular opening inclosed on three sides by walls, their summits orange with the last sunlight. There had once been water here for the grasses, and thin-leafed plants grew rank about the rock's base, then outlined in sere decay what had evidently been the path of a streamlet.

Fisher bestowed with more pleasure and alacrity than even she had been known to do upon many a worthier subject. "Yet once more, oh, ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me " MILTON'S Lycidas.

Even if it were not, the beasts could live upon what herbage remained over from last summer and on the leaves of trees, neither of which in this winter veld ever become quite lifeless, whereas on the sere and fire-swept plains beyond the mountains they might find nothing at all.

Getting back to the hotel he learnt that the Americans had only dropped in to dine, and were staying elsewhere. He saw no more of them; and on reflection he was not deeply concerned, for what earthly woman, going off in a freak as Marcia had done, and keeping silence so long, would care for a belated friendship with him now in the sere, even if he were to take the trouble to discover her.

The mountain city, situate on the verge of the malarious seaboard of Southern Tuscany, is reached from one side through windings of barren valleys, where the dried-up brooks are fringed, instead of reed, with the grey, sand-loving tamarisk; and from the other side, across a high-lying moorland of stunted heather and sere grass, whence the larks rise up scared by only a flock of sheep or a mare and her foal, and you journey for miles without meeting a house or a clump of cypresses.

I wandered into a lonely meadow, and presently in a hollow of deep shadows I lay down to stare at the stars. I lay hidden in the darkness, and ever and again the sough and uproar of the Beltane fires that were burning up the sere follies of a vanished age, and the shouting of the people passing through the fires and praying to be delivered from the prison of themselves, reached my ears. . . .

'For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill. Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent. Even when we contemplate the shepherds as poets, we may fail to discern why any magical property should be assigned to their mantles.

And to such the music of the world is dead. Love has vanished with the summer dews, and in its place are cutting blasts and snows and sere memories rustling like fallen leaves about the feet. As we grow old we are too apt to grow away from beauty and what is high and pure, our hearts harden by contact with the hard world.