A spirit haunts the year's last hours, Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers; To himself he talks: For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh. In the walks Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers, Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly, Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. The air is damp, and hush'd and close, As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death; My very heart faints, and my whole soul grieves, At the rich moist smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly, Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.--_Tennyson._ The black clouds are even now gathering upon the fringes of the sky, and the mellow season of the fruitage ends. Thus all the changes of the earth pass round, each imprinting its semblance on the brow of man, and writing its lessons on his soul; that like the green earth beneath his feet, he may, through cold and heat, through storm and sun, be ever blossoming with fragrant flowers, and yielding refreshing fruit from the inexhaustible soil of a regenerated heart. [From Slack's Ministry of the Beautiful, just published by A. Hart, Philadelphia.] THE FOUNTAIN IN THE WOOD. A little way apart from a great city was a fountain in a wood. The water gushed from a rock and ran in a little crystal stream to a mossy basin below; the wildflowers nodded their heads to catch its tiny spray; tall trees overarched it; and through the interspaces of their moving leaves the sunlight came and danced with rainbow feet upon its sparkling surface.