When she reached the bank of the little creek where Lofty John's brook ran into Blair Water, she heard piteous shrieks; and there, marooned on a tiny islet of sere marsh grass in the creek, was an unhappy little beast, its soaking fur plastered against its sides, shivering and trembling in the wind of the sharp autumnal day.
The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere; but—he is coming.
A weird, dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, the valley rims, the sere meadows.
Pale asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows between them and the harbor.
Two large boats and two small ones held them all, and away they went, first up through the three bridges and round the bend, then, turning, they floated down to the green island, where a grove of oaks rustled their sere leaves and the squirrels were still gathering acorns.
" Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and the "mist of green" was on the woods and in the valleys.
Presently Anne stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and steadily she took her way down through the sere clover field over the log bridge and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western woods.
It is not growing like a tree , In bulk doth make man better be; ,; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, ,, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: ; A lily of a day , Is fairer far in may, ,; Although it fall and die that night— , It was the plant and flower of light.
I have reached illusion's end , In this grove of falling leaves, , Each leaf a signal of past joy, , Drifting sere within my heart.
