"God bless you, Madge! God bless you!"
* * * * *
And thus in peace and in joy MANHOOD passes on into the third
season of our life--even as golden AUTUMN sinks slowly into the
tomb of WINTER.
_WINTER_;
OR,
_THE DREAMS OF AGE_
_DREAMS OF AGE._
_Winter._
Slowly, thickly, fastly, fall the snow-flakes,--like the seasons upon
the life of man. At the first they lose themselves in the brown mat of
herbage, or gently melt, as they fall upon the broad stepping-stone at
the door. But as hour after hour passes, the feathery flakes stretch
their white cloak plainly on the meadow, and chilling the doorstep with
their multitude, cover it with a mat of pearl.
The dried grass-tips pierce the mantle of white, like so many serried
spears; but as the storm goes softly on, they sink one by one to their
snowy tomb, and presently show nothing of all their army, save one or
two straggling banners of blackened and shrunken daisies.
Across the wide meadow that stretches from my window, I can see nothing
of those hills which were so green in summer; between me and them lie
only the soft, slow-moving masses, filling the air with whiteness I
catch only a glimpse of one gaunt and bare-armed oak, looming through
the feathery multitude like a tall ship's spars breaking through fog.
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