Penny's Top 20 / November 2025

 

Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in November 2025:

  1.  Prey, George J. Dance

  2.  December, John Clare

  3.  Skating, William Wordsworth

  4.  A November Grave, James B. Kenyon

  5.  How happy I was if I could forget, Emily Dickinson

  6.  I Speak Your Name, Sophie Jewett

  7.  All Day It Has Rained, Alun Lewis

  8.  Dreamers, Siegfried Sassoon

  9.  Autumn, John Clare

10.  There's Nothing Like the Sun, Edward Thomas

11.  Away, George J. Dance

12.  United Dames of America, Wallace Stevens

13.  November, Folgore da San Geminiano

14.  November, Maurice Thompson

15.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens

16.  Autumn Days, Jones Very

17.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud

18.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin

19.  Wander-Thirst, Gerald Gould

20. Theme in Yellow, Carl Sandburg

Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

November / Folgore da San Geminiano

November

Let baths and wine-butts be November's due,
    With thirty mule-loads of broad gold-pieces;
    And canopy with silk the streets that freeze;
And keep your drink-horns steadily in view.
Let every trader have his gain of you:
    Clareta shall your lamps and torches send, —
    Caeta, citron-candies without end; 

And each shall drink, and help his neighbour to.
And let the cold be great, and the fire grand:
    And still for fowls, and pastries sweetly wrought,
        For hares and kids, for roast and boil'd, be sure
You always have your appetites at hand;
    And then let night howl and heaven fall, so nought
        Be miss'd that makes a man's bed-furniture.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

from Livre d'heures de la reine Yolande, 15th century. Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn Days / Jones Very

Autumn Days

The winds are out with loud increasing shout,
    Where late before them walked the biting frost,
Whirling the leaves in their wild sport about,
    And twig and limb athwart our path are tost.
But still the sun looks kindly on the year,
    And days of summer warmth will linger yet;
And still the birds amid the fields we hear,
    For the ripe grain and scattered seeds they get.
The shortening days grow slowly less and less,
    And winter comes with many a warning on;
And still some day with kindly smile will bless,
    Till the last hope's deceit is fledged and gone,
Before the deepening snows block up the way,
And the sweet fields are made of howling blasts the prey.

~~
Jones Very (1813-1880)
from Poems, 1883

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Jones Very biography

Dori, Trees in the Wind, November 2007. CC BY-SA 3,0, Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn / John Clare

Autumn

          1
I love the fitfull gusts that shakes
 The casement all the day
And from the mossy elm tree takes
 The faded leaf away
Twirling it by the window-pane
With thousand others down the lane

      2
I love to see the shaking twig
 Dance till the shut of eve
The sparrow on the cottage rig
 Whose chirp would make believe
That spring was just now flirting by
In summers lap with flowers to lie

      3
I love to see the cottage smoke
 Curl upwards through the naked trees
The pigeons nestled round the coat
 On dull November days like these
The cock upon the dung-hill crowing
The mill sails on the heath agoing

      4
The feather from the ravens breast
 Falls on the stubble lea
The acorns near the old crows nest
 Fall pattering down the tree
The grunting pigs that wait for all
Scramble and hurry where they fall

~~
John Clare (1793-1864)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Clare biography

"Autumn (I Love the Fitful Gusts)" read by Shanid. Courtesy Everyday - Poetry.

November / Maurice Thompson

November

A hint of slumber in the wind,
    A dreamful stir of blades and stalks,
As tenderly the twilight flows
    Down all my garden walks.

My robes of work are thrown aside,
    The odor of the grass is sweet;
The pleasure of a day well spent
    Bathes me from head to feet.

Calmly I wait the dreary change,—
    The season cutting sharp and sheer
Through the wan bowers of death that fringe
    The border of the year.

And while I muse, the fated earth
    Into a colder current dips,—
Feels winter's scourge with summer's kiss
    Still warm upon her lips.

~~ 

Maurice Thompson (1844-1901)
from Poems, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Maurice Thompson biography

Carlos Honda, Suzuka Flower Park, November 2013. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

How happy I was if I could forget / Emily Dickinson

[898]

How happy I was if I could forget
To remember how sad I am
Would be an easy adversity
But the recollecting of Bloom

Keeps making November difficult
Till I who was almost bold
Lose my way like a little Child
And perish of the cold.

~~

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Emily Dickinson biography

"How happy I was if I could forget" read by Fabricio Guerrini.

A November Grave / James B. Kenyon

A November Grave

The grey clouds gather, fold on fold,
Above the blurred and dripping wold;
The light is growing pale and cold,
    And ghostly mists steal o'er the plain.

A robin in the elm is crying;
About the eaves the wind is sighing;
O dismal day! my heart is lying
    In yon fresh grave drenched with the rain.

~~
James B. Kenyon (1858-1924)
from At the Gate of Dreams, 1892

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

James B. Kenyon biography

Dave Hitchborne, Gravestone, St. Andrew's graveyard, Miningsby, 2007. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.