Near by, a vine circled a tree, and swung out from its top. I had noticed it many times before during the season. It was then hung with large-mouthed flowers, which opened with the morning. Was it a summer chime of bells that tolled the sunlight into the temple?--the forest clock, that opened and shut the hours? The bells were broken now; the first frost had cracked them. I saw a bird, dressed in blue, run up the vine, and hitch along in a very deliberate way, and peer into this bell and into that, as if he wondered why they did not spread; but this might have been an odd fancy of mine.
The first frost seemed to have passed through the tree-tops that rolled over the gorge in a hurry. The prominent points of the foliage were tufted with russet, but its hollows and dells were as green as ever.
The woodland harvest was nigh--the Creator's own harvest, sown and reaped without the aid of man. The pawpaw began to shed its fruit; mandrakes stood up all over the forest, like umbrellas loaded with apples of gold; the wild cucumber was bending under its own weight; the bark of the hickory and beech nut was broken, and the fruit peeped out; acorns were loosening in their cups; the grape was purple and fragrant, and ready to gush with richness; and away down below me I noticed a crabbed, sour-looking plum tree, holding on to the hill-side with all its energy, and covered with its rosy-cheeked children.
A few flowers yet lingered on the upland, breathing their last. The pink, violet, lupine, and a thousand nameless ones, had shed and buried their seeds long before; but the flaming, cardinal-fringed gentian, the yellow moccasin, and troops of lilies, still crowded the swales and watercourses, braving out the first frost. Insects were singing a melancholy dirge around me; a bee droned past in great haste, with a consequential hum; the year was passing and dying, like a vibration over the earth.
The air was filled with winged seeds, sailing away off here and away off there, and going I do not know where. The wild cotton burst its pod, and furred out at a great rate; a large company of thistle balloons rolled up lazily into the sky, and went out of sight (to the stars, probably), directed by some invisible hand to the place of their destination. Birds were picking and carrying clusters of grapes and s'coke far and wide. How beautifully Nature sows her solemn wastes! The winds and the birds are her husbandmen, and the work goes on with a song.