in-wet pavements,
Through all the embowered town.

They were washed by the Autumn tempest,
They were trod by hurrying feet,
And the maids came out with their besoms
And swept them into the street,

To be crushed and lost forever
'Neath the wheels, in the black mire lost,--
The Summer's precious darlings,
She nurtured at such cost!

O words that have fallen from me!
O golden thoughts and true!
Must I see in the leaves a symbol
Of the fate which awaiteth you?

II.--APRIL.

Again has come the Spring-time,
With the crocus's golden bloom,
With the smell of the fresh-turned earth-mould,
And the violet's perfume.

O gardener! tell me the secret
Of thy flowers so rare and sweet!--
--"I have only enriched my garden
With the black mire from the street."

THE GAUCHO.

What _is_ a Gaucho?

That is precisely what I am going to tell you.

Take my hand, if you please. Shod with the shoes of swiftness, we have
annihilated space and time. We are standing in the centre of a boundless
plain. Look north and south and east and west: for five hundred miles
beyond the limit of your vision, the scarcely undulating level stretches
on either hand. Miles, leagues, away from us, the green of the torrid
grass is melting into a misty dun; still further miles, and the misty dun
has faded to a shadowy blue; more miles, it rounds at last away into the
sky. A hundred miles behind us lies the nearest village; two hundred in
another direction will bring you to the nearest town. The swiftest horse
may gallop for a day and night unswervingly, and still not reach a
dwelling-place of man. We are placed in the midst of a vast, unpeopled
circle, whose radii measure a thousand miles.

But see! a cloud arises in the South. Swiftly it rolls towards us; behind
it there is tumult and alarm. The ground trembles at its approach; the air
is shaken by the bellowing that it covers. Quick! let us stand aside! for,
as the haze is lifted, we can see the hurrying forms of a thousand cattle,
speeding with lowered horns and fiery eyes across the plain. Fortunately,
they do not observe our presence; were it otherwise, we should be trampled
or gored to death in the twinkling of an eye. Onward they rush; at last
the hindmost animals have passed; and see, behind them all there scours a
man!

He glances at us, as he rushes by, and determines to give us a specimen of
his only art. Shaking his long, wild locks, as he rises in the