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