November / Alexander Louis Fraser

November

Each sapless leaf that lingers here
    Where bare woods mourn
Shall soon upon Wind’s silvery bier
    Be gravewards borne.

The bees have left our honey-bowers,   
    The birds are fled;
And ’neath the blight of frost our flowers
    Have fallen — dead!

Yon meadow now, where grass grew green,
    No grazing yields:     
No bells are heard, no flocks are seen
    In far, fenced fields.

Where children played till all the ground
    Was wet with dew,
Autumn, to-day, with threatening sound   
    Snow trumpets blew.

Fear not November’s challenge bold —
    We’ve books and friends;
And hearths that never can grow cold:
    These make amends!

~~
Alexander Louis Fraser (1870-1954)
from the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, 1913

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Alexander Louis Fraser biography