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]
"At Day-close in November" read by John Pryck.
In Satires of Circumstance (1914), Hardy gave the last line as "A time when none will be seen."
ReplyDeleteShakespearean sonnets usually have a ABAB/CDCD/EFEF rhyme scheme, minus the ending couplet. Varied meter. I love the first stanza. Specks in the eye floating by familiar. 🥰
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