The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere -- The leaves they were withering and sere ; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year: It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir: -- It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere .

On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass, which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting suggestion.

Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure.

Grasshoppers skipped briskly in the sere grass, and crickets chirped like fairy pipers at a feast.

The sea was roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere , scarfed with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was blue -- blue -- blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.

That great soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside - could it not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion?

A weird, dreamy stillness had fallen on the purple earth, the dark fir woods, the valley rims, the sere meadows.

"Well, if a man can stride four and a-half feet without the smallest effort, he can't be quite in the sere and yellow.

And Clover guarded well its rest, Till Autumn's leaves were sere , Till all her sister flowers were gone, And her winter sleep drew near.

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.