At Day-close in November / Thomas Hardy

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,
    That none will in time be seen.

~~

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

from Collected Poems, 1919

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

Thomas Hardy biography

"At Day-close in November" read by John Pryck.

Joy in Sorrow / James Alexander Tucker

Joy in Sorrow

The dull November days are here,
Days of wan skies and landscapes drear,
When through the forest far and near
Is heard the squirrel chattering clear,
        The partridge drumming low;
When all throughout the faded land,
Like alms from some swift, scornful hand
Toss'd to a wretched beggar band,
        The gold leaves downward blow.

Anon when moons are pale on high,
Encircled in a watery sky,
Is heard the loon's last lonely cry
From shores where silent shadows lie
        Dark-dyed in depths below;
And ever through the restless night,
Afar to left and far to right,
Like some unclean and cursed sprite,
        The owl flits to and fro.

But though the world is gray and lone,
The song-birds and the flowers flown;
Though on each writhing wind is blown
The dirge of summer overthrown,
        Man is not wholly bowed.
From some unguessed, unfathom'd spell,
He feels a joy he cannot tell;
Oh, in the wild night it is well
        One star is still allowed!

Thus, when our heads are bended low,
And Death, the tyrant, smites with woe,
Our souls may catch some mystic glow
To light the dismal way; for though
        We never quite may tell
Whence comes it to the bruised heart,
Its balm and healing to impart,
Yet always with the pang, the smart,
        There cometh peace as well.

~~

James Alexander Tucker (1872-1903)

from Poems, 1904

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James Alexander Tucker biography

Simon Harrod, Landscape in grey and brown, 2012. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Thanksgiving / Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Thanksgiving

We walk on starry fields of white
    And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
    We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
    To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
    Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
    Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
    Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
    We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
    And conquers if we let it.

There’s not a day in all the year
    But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
    To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
    Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
    While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
    Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
    Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
    To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
    To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
    Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
    Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
    As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
    A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

~~
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)
from Custer, and other poems, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Ella Wheeler Wilcox biography

Ms. Jones, Our Almost Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, 2005 (cropped).

CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

November / Wilson MacDonald

November

Some nomad yearning burns within my singing
    For that bleak beauty scorned of lute and lyre,
That loveliness of gray whereon are winging

  The last wild lyrists of the marsh and mire.   

    And, lest that migrant choir 

Should wing away all music from the land,
    By one forgotten lake I chant this song;
And that cold passion of her choric sand
    Shall to my muse belong.

This lake, unnamed in June, is still more nameless
  Amid this ruined grandeur of the year,
These roofless, pillared temples where the tameless
  Young Winter soon will chase her frosty spear;
  And where even now I hear
The prelude of her long and ghostly wail
  In boughs that creak and shallows that congeal,
And, like a child who hears some ghostly tale,
  A strange delight I feel.

I saw the year pass by me like a dancer:
  The imp of April and the child of May,
The modest maid of June with her soft answer
  To every wooing wind that blew her way.
  And now, this autumn day,
When the high rouge of leaf no more conceals
  And there is none to pipe a dancing theme,
A woman old, with heavy toes and heels,
  Plods by me in a dream.

Let others pour their opulence of roses
  To please their high-born ladies of the tower;
Rather would I the thin, wan hand that closes
  In grateful love about my simple flower.
  While comrade singers shower
With wonderment of word and garish phrase
  The luscious year, that moves from plough to plough,
I rest content to twine mine austere bays
  About November’s brow.

Here, in this cheerless womb, is born the glory
  Of June’s white-woven whorl of scented hours.
And here, within this mist supine and hoary,   

    Is dreamed the foot of April’s dancing showers.
  Here, where the black leaf cowers
Against the dusky bosom of the earth,
  Is drawn the milk that feeds the dawning year;
And Flora plans, herself, the rhythmic birth
  Of spring’s new chorus here.

Above my nameless lake the broken fingers
  Of those once-hardy reeds are jewelled with ice;
The mallard duck, despite this warning, lingers
  Until the gripping air is like a vice.
  The year hath tossed her dice
And lost the Indian summer, and the loon
  Chills, with her wintry laughter, the bleak skies —
And, where a meagre sun is doled at noon,
  A wounded pheasant dies.

 
And, lest these hueless days should pass despairing,
  The rose hath garbed her seeds in orbs of red —
The last warm touch of pure, autumnal daring
  In all this frosty garden of the dead.
  The quail, to hardship bred,
Frames her soft eyes with tangled brush and brier,
  And woos us with the contrast; and the hare,
Urged by the weasel’s probing eyes of fire,
  Leaps from her peaceful lair.

This is the hour when the bold sun is sleeping
  On his last couch — and here his lady comes,
Cold as a cloud that will not melt to weeping,
  And breaks the flutes and muffles all the drums,
  And the last warmth benumbs.
I know the road she walks to greet her lord
  By the strange rustle of her silken dress;
Or do I hear the oak-tree’s phantom horde
  Of dead leaves in distress?

O troubadours of spring! O bards of gladness,
  Who in the scented gardens love to throng!
So loath are ye to sing the hour of sadness
  When all the world is hungry for a song,
  And nights are strange and long,
That I, in this pale hour, have called mine art
  To hymn that beauty, scorned of pen and tongue;
For God Himself hath set my song apart
  To praise His worlds unsung.

~~
Wilson MacDonald (1880-1967)
from Out of the Wilderness, 1926

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

Wilson MacDonald biography

Traveling Otter, Dusk at Pontoon Lake, Yellowknife, Canada, November 2010.

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Song-sparrow in November / Arthur Stringer

The Song-sparrow in November

Alone, forlorn, blown down autummal hills,
Floats sweetly solemn, fond and low,
One mournful-noted song that fills
The twilight, lonely grown with snow.

O shower of sound that more than Music seems,
O song that some vague sadness of farewell
Leaves crowned and warm with tears! — must all our dreams
Of deepest Beauty thus with Sorrow dwell?

~~
Arthur Stringer (1874-1950)
from The Woman in the rain, and other poems, 1907

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

Arthur Stringer biography

Rhododendrites, White-Throated Sparrow in Prospect Part, November 2020.

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley / Ezra Pound (IV-V)

    IV

These fought in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case . . .

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . . .
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.


    V

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

~~
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, 1920

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

Ezra Pound biography

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (I-V) read by Exra Pound. (IV begins at 3:10).

Courtesy awetblackbough.

The Turning of the Leafe / Edith M. Thomas

The Turning of the Leafe

        O happy leafe
(I to the vernal bud did say),
        Thou hast no griefe,
Kissed by the loving sunne in May.

        Me envy not
            (The leafe replied),
        As sweet thy lot
            All summertide.

        O piteous leafe
(I to wild autumn's waife did say), 

        Thy pride how briefe,
How soone the frost and wind make way.

        Me pity not
            (The leafe replied),
        As vexed thy lot,
            As briefe thy pride.

~~

Edith M. Thomas

from Through the Year with the poets, 1885

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

Edith M. Thomas biography

Titus Tscharntke, Autumn Leaf on Road, 2013. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

November / H. Cordelia Ray

November

The leaves are sere,
The woods are drear,
The breeze that erst so merrily did play,
Naught giveth but a melancholy lay;
Yet life's great lessons do not fail
E'en in November's gale.
 
~~
H. Cordelia Ray (1852-1916)
from Poems, 1910

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

H. Cordelia Ray biography

Doug Lee, Late Autumn in the West Woods, 2011. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

November's featured poem

The Penny Blog's featured poem for November 2023:

A Scroll, by George J. Dance

By the river I saw geese fly
Like black angels, far and high —
Trees were cracks in a scarlet sky —
A scent of smoke — A dolorous cry
[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2010/11/a-scroll-george-j-dance.html

Penny's Top 20 / October 2023

                              

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in October 2023:

  1.  Maye, Edmund Spenser

  2.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  3.  First Week in October, Charles Tennyson Turner

  4.  The feathers of the willow, Richard Watson Dixon

  5.  August, Edmund Spenser
  6.  In the slant sunlight of the young October, Alfred Austin
  7.  Penny, or Penny's Hat, George J. Dance

  8.  You say you love, but with a voice, John Keats
  9.  An October Afternoon, William Wilfred Campbell

10.  Autumn, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

11.  Theme in Yellow, Carl Sandburg
12.  October, H. Cordelia Ray
13.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

14.  Late Autumn, William Allingham
15.  Post Meridian, George J. Dance

16.  Death as the Teacher of Love-Lore, Frank T. Marzials

17.  Sagacity, William Rose Benét

18.  A Vagabond Song, Bliss Carman
19.  The Autumn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

20. Connecticut Autumn, Hyam Plutzik

Source: Blogger, "Stats"