<h2><SPAN name="THE_DEATH_OF_THE_FLOWERS" id="THE_DEATH_OF_THE_FLOWERS"></SPAN> THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.</h2>
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<div class="verse">The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,</div>
<div class="verse">Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.</div>
<div class="verse">Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;</div>
<div class="verse">They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the Rabbit's tread.</div>
<div class="verse">The Robin and the Wren are flown, and from the shrubs the Jay,</div>
<div class="verse">And from the wood-top calls the Crow through all the gloomy
day.</div>
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<div class="verse">Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang
and stood</div>
<div class="verse">In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?</div>
<div class="verse">Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers</div>
<div class="verse">Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.</div>
<div class="verse">The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain</div>
<div class="verse">Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.</div>
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<div class="verse">The Wind-flower and the Violet, they perished long ago,</div>
<div class="verse">And the Brier-rose and the Orchis died among the summer glow;</div>
<div class="verse">But on the hill the Golden-rod, and the Aster in the wood,</div>
<div class="verse">And the yellow Sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,</div>
<div class="verse">Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the
plague on men,</div>
<div class="verse">And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and
glen.</div>
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<div class="verse">And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will
come,</div>
<div class="verse">To call the Squirrel and the Bee from out their wintry home;</div>
<div class="verse">When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are
still,</div>
<div class="verse">And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,</div>
<div class="verse">The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he
bore</div>
<div class="verse">And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>Bryant.</i></div>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</SPAN></span></p>
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