"Fading flowers are thine, October! Droopeth sad the sweet blue-bell; Gone the blossoms April cherish'd-- Violet, lily, rose, all perish'd-- Fragrance fled from field and dell. "Songless are thy woods, October! Save when redbreast's mournful lay Through the calm gray morn is swelling, To the list'ning echoes telling Tales of darkness and decay. "Saddest sounds are thine, October! Music of the falling leaf O'er the pensive spirit stealing, To its inmost depths revealing: 'Thus all gladness sinks in grief.' "I do love thee, drear October! More than budding, blooming Spring-- Hers is hope, delusive smiling, Trusting hearts to grief beguiling; Mem'ry loves thy dusky wing. "Joyous hearts may love the summer, Bright with sunshine, song, and flower; But the heart whose hopes are blighted, In the gloom of woe benighted, Better loves thy kindred bower. "'Twas in thee, thou sad October! Death laid low my bosom flower. Life hath been a wintry river, O'er whose ripple gladness never Gleameth brightly since that hour. "Hearts would fain be with their treasure, Mine is slumb'ring in the clay; Wandering here alone, uncheery, Deem 't not strange this heart should weary For its own October day." The greater proportion of Mr Macdonald's poems first saw the light in the columns of the _Glasgow Citizen_, then, as now, conducted by Mr James Heddenvick, an accomplished journalist, and a poet of no mean order. The casual connexion of contributor and editor ripened into friendship, and in 1849, Mr Macdonald was permanently engaged as Mr Hedderwick's sub-editor. He was now occupied in congenial tasks, and a gush of song followed this accession of leisure and opportunity. Sunshine and the scent of flowers seemed to have stolen into the weekly columns. You "smelt the meadow" in casual paragraph and in leading article. The _Citizen_ not only kept its eye on Louis Napoleon and the Czar, it paid attention to the building of the hedge-sparrow's nest, and the blowing of the wild flower as well.