November poems 2

 

 

 

                              

Rita Dove

August 28 1952

 

November for Beginners

 

Snow would be the easy

 way out - that softening

 sky like a sigh of relief

 at finally being allowed

 to yield.  No dice.

 We stack twigs for burning

 in glistening patches

 but the rain won't give.

 

 So we wait, breeding

 mood, making music

 of decline.  We sit down

 in the smell of the past

 and rise in a light

 that is already leaving.

 We ache in secret,

 memorizing

 

 a gloomy line

 or two of German.

 When spring comes

 we promise to act

 the fool.  Pour,

 rain!  Sail, wind,

 with your cargo of zithers!

 

 

 

   Thomas Hardy

   June 2, 1840   –   January 11, 1928                

   

                               At Day-Close In November                           

 

                               The ten hours' light is abating,

                              And a late bird flies across,

                              Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,

                              Give their black heads a toss.

 

                              Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,

                              Float past like specks in the eye;

                              I set every tree in my June time,

                              And now they obscure the sky.

 

                              And the children who ramble through here

                              Conceive that there never has been

                              A time when no tall trees grew here,

                              A time when none will be seen.

 

 

 

Adelaide Crapsey

September 9, 1878   –   October 8, 1914

 

November Night

 

Listen. With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

 

 

 

Edward Thomas

March 3, 1878   –   April 9, 1917

 

There's Nothing Like The Sun

 

There’s nothing like the sun as the year dies,

Kind as it can be, this world being made so,

To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,

To all things that it touches except snow,

Whether on mountain side or street of town.

The south wall warms me: November has begun,

Yet never shone the sun as fair as now

While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough

With spangles of the morning's storm drop down

Because the starling shakes it, whistling what

Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot

That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,

Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,

Or January's, or February's, great days:

And August, September, October, and December

Have equal days, all different from November.

No day of any month but I have said--

Or, if I could live long enough, should say--

"There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day"

walk will There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.

 

 

 

AE Housman      

March 26, 1859   –   April 30, 1936

 

The Night Is Freezing Fast

 

The night is freezing fast,

   To-morrow comes December;

        And winterfalls of old

Are with me from the past;

    And chiefly I remember

        How Dick would hate the cold.

 

 Fall, winter, fall; for he,

    Prompt hand and headpiece clever,

        Has woven a winter robe,

And made of earth and sea

    His overcoat for ever,

        And wears the turning globe.

 

 

--Cat

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November poems

 

 Ah, November!

 

 

Thomas Hood

May 23, 1799     –    May 3, 1845

 

November

              

No sun — no moon!

No morn — no noon —

No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day.

 

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member —

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! —

November!

 

               

 

 

Walter de la Mare           

April 25, 1873    –    June 22, 1956

 

November

 

There is wind where the rose was,

Cold rain where sweet grass was,

And clouds like sheep

Stream o'er the steep

Grey skies where the lark was.

 

Nought warm where your hand was,

Nought gold where your hair was,

But phantom, forlorn,

Beneath the thorn,

Your ghost where your face was.

 

Cold wind where your voice was,

Tears, tears where my heart was,

And ever with me,

Child, ever with me,

Silence where hope was.

 

 

 

Amy Lowell        

February 9, 1874   –    May 12, 1925

 

November

 

The vine leaves against the brick walls of my house,

Are rusty and broken.

Dead leaves gather under the pine-trees,

The brittle boughs of lilac-bushes

Sweep against the stars.

And I sit under a lamp

Trying to write down the emptiness of my heart.

Even the cat will not stay with me,

But prefers the rain

Under the meagre shelter of a cellar window.

 

 

 

John Clare          

July 13, 1793   –    May 20, 1864

 

The Shepherds Calendar – November

 

      The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;

      And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face

      Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,

      When done the journey of her nightly race,

      Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.

      For days the shepherds in the fields may be,

      Nor mark a patch of sky - blindfold they trace,

      The plains, that seem without a bush or tree,

      Whistling aloud by guess, to flocks they cannot see.

 

      The timid hare seems half its fears to lose,

      Crouching and sleeping 'neath its grassy lair,

      And scarcely startles, tho' the shepherd goes

      Close by its home, and dogs are barking there;

      The wild colt only turns around to stare

      At passer by, then knaps his hide again;

      And moody crows beside the road forbear

      To fly, tho' pelted by the passing swain;

      Thus day seems turn'd to night, and tries to wake in vain.

 

      The owlet leaves her hiding-place at noon,

      And flaps her grey wings in the doubling light;

      The hoarse jay screams to see her out so soon,

      And small birds chirp and startle with affright;

      Much doth it scare the superstitious wight,

      Who dreams of sorry luck, and sore dismay;

      While cow-boys think the day a dream of night,

      And oft grow fearful on their lonely way,

      Fancying that ghosts may wake, and leave their graves by day.

 

      Yet but awhile the slumbering weather flings

      Its murky prison round - then winds wake loud;

      With sudden stir the startled forest sings

      Winter's returning song - cloud races cloud,

      And the horizon throws away its shroud,

      Sweeping a stretching circle from the eye;

      Storms upon storms in quick succession crowd,

      And o'er the sameness of the purple sky

      Heaven paints, with hurried hand, wild hues of every dye.

 

      At length it comes along the forest oaks,

      With sobbing ebbs, and uproar gathering high;

      The scared, hoarse raven on its cradle croaks,

      And stockdove-flocks in hurried terrors fly,

      While the blue hawk hangs o'er them in the sky.-

      The hedger hastens from the storm begun,

      To seek a shelter that may keep him dry;

      And foresters low bent, the wind to shun,

      Scarce hear amid the strife the poacher's muttering gun.

 

      The ploughman hears its humming rage begin,

      And hies for shelter from his naked toil;

      Buttoning his doublet closer to his chin,

      He bends and scampers o'er the elting soil,

      While clouds above him in wild fury boil,

      And winds drive heavily the beating rain;

      He turns his back to catch his breath awhile,

      Then ekes his speed and faces it again,

      To seek the shepherd's hut beside the rushy plain.

 

      The boy, that scareth from the spiry wheat

      The melancholy crow - in hurry weaves,

      Beneath an ivied tree, his sheltering seat,

      Of rushy flags and sedges tied in sheaves,

      Or from the field a shock of stubble thieves.

      There he doth dithering sit, and entertain

      His eyes with marking the storm-driven leaves;

      Oft spying nests where he spring eggs had ta'en,

      And wishing in his heart 'twas summer-time again.

 

      Thus wears the month along, in checker'd moods,

      Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;

      One hour dies silent o'er the sleepy woods,

      The next wakes loud with unexpected storms;

      A dreary nakedness the field deforms -

      Yet many a rural sound, and rural sight,

      Lives in the village still about the farms,

      Where toil's rude uproar hums from morn till night

      Noises, in which the ears of Industry delight.

 

      At length the stir of rural labour's still,

      And Industry her care awhile forgoes;

      When Winter comes in earnest to fulfil

      His yearly task, at bleak November's close,

      And stops the plough, and hides the field in snows;

      When frost locks up the stream in chill delay,

      And mellows on the hedge the jetty sloes,

      For little birds - then Toil hath time for play,

      And nought but threshers' flails awake the dreary day.

 

 

--Cat

 

 

Remembering

And There Was a Great Calm

BY THOMAS HARDY

(On the Signing of the Armistice, 11 Nov. 1918)

 

                                              I

There had been years of Passion—scorching, cold,

And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,

Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,

Among the young, among the weak and old,

And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

 

 

                                       II

Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught

Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,

Philosophies that sages long had taught,

And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,

And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.

 

 

                                       III

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used

To 'dug-outs', 'snipers', 'Huns', from the war-adept

In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;

To day-dreamt men in millions, when they mused—

To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

 

 

                                       IV

Waking to wish existence timeless, null,

Sirius they watched above where armies fell;

He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull

Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull

Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

 

 

                                       V

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly

Were dead and damned, there sounded 'War is done!'

One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,

'Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,

And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?'

 

 

                                       VI

Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance

To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,

As they had raised it through the four years’ dance

Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;

And murmured, 'Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?'

 

 

                                       VII

Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,

The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.

One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot

And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, 'What?

Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?'

 

 

                                       VIII

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,

No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,

No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;

Worn horses mused: 'We are not whipped to-day;'

No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

 

 

                                       IX

Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;

There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;

Some could, some could not, shake off misery:

The Sinister Spirit sneered: 'It had to be!'

 

 

 

--Cat

And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, 'Why?'