November Rain / Ellen P. Allerton

November Rain

November rain! November rain!
Fitfully beating the window pane:
Creeping in pools across the street;
Clinging in slush to dainty feet;
Shrouding in black the sun at noon;
Wrapping a pall about the moon.

Out in the darkness, sobbing, sighing,
Yonder, where the dead are lying,
Over mounds with headstones gray,
And new ones made but yesterday —
Weeps the rain above the mould,
Weeps the night-rain, sad and cold.

The low wind wails—a voice of pain.
Fit to chime with the weeping rain.
Dirge-like, solemn, it sinks and swells,
Till I start and listen for tolling bells,
And let them toll — the summer fled,
Wild winds and rain bewail the dead.

And yet not dead. A prophesy
Over wintry wastes comes down to me,
Strong, exultant, floating down
Over frozen fields and forests brown,
Clear and sweet it peals and swells,
Like New Year chimes from midnight bells.

It tells of a heart with life aglow,
Throbbing under the shrouding snow,
Beating, beating with pulses warm,
While roars above it the gusty storm.
Asleep — not dead — your grief is vain,
Wild, wailing winds, November rain.

~~
Ellen P. Allerton (1835-1893)
from Annabel, and other poems, 1885

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ellen P. Allerton biography