October

There comes a month in the weary year- A month of leisure and healthful rest- When the ripe leaves fall and the air is clear - October, the brown, the criap, the biest. My life has little enough of bliss ? I drug the days of the odd eleven, Counting the time that shall lead to this - The moiith that opêns the hunter'e heaven. And oh ! for the morning's crisp and white, With the sweep of the houuds upon the track ; The bark-roofed cabin, and the camp-fire's light, The break of the deer and the rifles crack. Do you cali this thrilling? I teil yon, friend, A liie in the forest is past all praise ; Give me a dozen such months on end - You may take my balance of years and days. For lirick and mortar breed filth and crime, And a pulse of evil that throbs and beats; And men grow withered before their prime With a curse paved iii on the lanes and streets. And lungs are choked and shoulders are bowed In the smouldering reek oí mili and mine; And Deatii stalks in on the struggling crowd, But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine. And, of all to which the memory clings, There is naught so sweet as the sunny spots Where our shauties stood by the crystal spring, The vaaished hounds, aud the luoky shots.