"It is a sultry day: the sun has drunk The dew that lay upon the morning grass; There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again Instantly on the wing. The plants around Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills With all their growth of woods, silent and stern, As if the scorching heat and dazzling light Were but an element they loved." But our radiant and many-colored autumn is Bryant's favorite season, and some of his most beautiful and characteristic passages are those which paint its hues of crimson and purple, and the vaporous gold of its atmosphere. Such is the number of these passages that it is difficult to make a selection of one or two for quotation. Here is one from "Autumn Woods." "Let in through all the trees, Come the strange rays; the forest-depths are bright; Their sunny-colored foliage, in the breeze, Twinkles like beams of light. "The rivulet, late unseen, Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, Shines with the image of its golden screen And glimmerings of the sun. "But, 'neath yon crimson tree, Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame." Here is nothing imitative or borrowed, and here are no unmeaning generalities. Everything is exact and local,--drawn from an American autumn, and no other. And how lovely an image is that in the third stanza, and what an added charm it gives to an object in itself most beautiful! But our renders must indulge us with one more quotation under this head, although we take it from one of the most popular--perhaps the most popular--of his poems, "The Death of the Flowers." "The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm mid-day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, _When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill_, The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more."