In the mellow days of autumn, when the trees, like dames no longer
young, seek to forget their aged looks under gorgeous bright-toned
robes of gold and brown and purple, and the grain is yellow in the
fields, and the ruddy fruit hangs clustering from the drooping boughs,
and the wooded hills in their thousand hues stretched like leafy
rainbows above the vale--ah! surely they look their dullest and
dowdiest then. The gathered glory of the dying year is all around
them. They seem so out of place among it, in their somber,
everlasting green, like poor relations at a rich man's feast. It is
such a weather-beaten old green dress. So many summers' suns have
blistered it, so many winters' rains have beat upon it--such a shabby,
mean, old dress; it is the only one they have!
They do not look quite so bad when the weary winter weather is come,
when the flowers are dead, and the hedgerows are bare, and the trees
stand out leafless against the gray sky, and the birds are all silent,
and the fields are brown, and the vine clings round the cottages with
skinny, fleshless arms, and they alone of all things are unchanged,
they alone of all the forest are green, they alone of all the verdant
host stand firm to front the cruel winter.
They are not very beautiful, only strong and stanch and steadfast--the
same in all times, through all seasons--ever the same, ever green.
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