Sunday, November 26, 2023

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]


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

2 comments:

  1. In Satires of Circumstance (1914), Hardy gave the last line as "A time when none will be seen."

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  2. Shakespearean 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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