[ { "title": "A Calendar of Sonnets: November", "author": "Helen Hunt Jackson", "lines": [ "This is the treacherous month when autumn days", "With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts.", "Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts", "Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze", "Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,", "And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,", "The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts", "Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning's rays", "Willidly shine upon and slowly melt,", "Too late to bid the violet live again.", "The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;", "Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.", "What joy sufficient hath November felt?", "What profit from the violet's day of pain?" ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "November", "author": "John Clare", "lines": [ "The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;", " And, if the sun looks through, tis with a face", " Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,", " When done the journey of her nightly race,", " Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.", " For days the shepherds in the fields may be,", " Nor mark a patch of sky--blindfold they trace,", " The plains, that seem without a bush or tree,", "Whistling aloud by guess, to flocks they cannot see.", "", "The timid hare seems half its fears to lose,", " Crouching and sleeping neath its grassy lair,", " And scarcely startles, though the shepherd goes", " Close by its home, and dogs are barking there;", " The wild colt only turns around to stare", " At passer by, then knaps his hide again;", " And moody crows beside the road forbear", " To fly, though pelted by the passing swain;", "Thus day seems turned to night, and tries to wake in vain.", "", "The owlet leaves her hiding-place at noon,", " And flaps her grey wings in the doubling light;", " The hoarse jay screams to see her out so soon,", " And small birds chirp and startle with affright;", " Much doth it scare the superstitious wight,", " Who dreams of sorry luck, and sore dismay;", " While cow-boys think the day a dream of night,", " And oft grow fearful on their lonely way,", "Fancying that ghosts may wake, and leave their graves by day.", "", "Yet but awhile the slumbering weather flings", " Its murky prison round--then winds wake loud;", " With sudden stir the startled forest sings", " Winter's returning song-cloud races cloud.", " And the horizon throws away its shroud,", " Sweeping a stretching circle from the eye;", " Storms upon storms in quick succession crowd,", " And oer the sameness of the purple sky", "Heaven paints, with hurried hand, wild hues of every dye.", "", "At length it comes among the forest oaks,", " With sobbing ebbs, and uproar gathering high;", " The scared, hoarse raven on its cradle croaks,", " And stockdove-flocks in hurried terrors fly,", " While the blue hawk hangs oer them in the sky.--", " The hedger hastens from the storm begun,", " To seek a shelter that may keep him dry;", " And foresters low bent, the wind to shun,", "Scarce hear amid the strife the poacher's muttering gun.", "", "The ploughman hears its humming rage begin,", " And hies for shelter from his naked toil;", " Buttoning his doublet closer to his chin,", " He bends and scampers oer the elting soil,", " While clouds above him in wild fury boil,", " And winds drive heavily the beating rain;", " He turns his back to catch his breath awhile,", " Then ekes his speed and faces it again,", "To seek the shepherd's hut beside the rushy plain.", "", "The boy, that scareth from the spiry wheat", " The melancholy crow--in hurry weaves,", " Beneath an ivied tree, his sheltering seat,", " Of rushy flags and sedges tied in sheaves,", " Or from the field a shock of stubble thieves.", " There he doth dithering sit, and entertain", " His eyes with marking the storm-driven leaves;", " Oft spying nests where he spring eggs had ta'en,", "And wishing in his heart twas summer-time again.", "", "Thus wears the month along, in checkered moods,", " Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;", " One hour dies silent oer the sleepy woods,", " The next wakes loud with unexpected storms;", " A dreary nakedness the field deforms--", " Yet many a rural sound, and rural sight,", " Lives in the village still about the farms,", " Where toil's rude uproar hums from morn till night", "Noises, in which the ears of industry delight.", "", "At length the stir of rural labour's still,", " And industry her care awhile foregoes;", " When winter comes in earnest to fulfil", " His yearly task, at bleak November's close,", " And stops the plough, and hides the field in snows;", " When frost locks up the stream in chill delay", " And mellows on the hedge the jetty sloes,", " For little birds--then toil hath time for play,", "And nought but threshers' flails awake the dreary day." ], "linecount": "81" }, { "title": "November", "author": "John Clare", "lines": [ "Sybil of months, and worshipper of winds,", " I love thee, rude and boisterous as thou art;", "And scraps of joy my wandering ever finds", " Mid thy uproarious madness--when the start", "Of sudden tempests stirs the forest leaves", " Into hoarse fury, till the shower set free", "Stills the huge swells. Then ebb the mighty heaves,", " That sway the forest like a troubled sea.", "I love thy wizard noise, and rave in turn", " Half-vacant thoughts and rhymes of careless form;", "Then hide me from the shower, a short sojourn,", " Neath ivied oak; and mutter to the storm,", "Wishing its melody belonged to me,", "That I might breathe a living song to thee." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "November", "author": "Edward Thomas", "lines": [ "NOVEMBER'S days are thirty:", "November's earth is dirty,", "Those thirty days, from first to last;", "And the prettiest things on ground are the paths", "With morning and evening hobnails dinted,", "With foot and wing-tip overprinted", "Or separately charactered,", "Of little beast and little bird.", "The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads", "Make the worst going, the best the woods", "Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter.", "Few care for the mixture of earth and water,", "Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,", "Straw, feather, all that men scorn,", "Pounded up and sodden by flood,", "Condemned as mud.", "", "But of all the months when earth is greener", "Not one has clean skies that are cleaner.", "Clean and clear and sweet and cold,", "They shine above the earth so old,", "While the after-tempest cloud", "Sails over in silence though winds are loud,", "Till the full moon in the east", "Looks at the planet in the west", "And earth is silent as it is black,", "Yet not unhappy for its lack.", "Up from the dirty earth men stare:", "One imagines a refuge there", "Above the mud, in the pure bright", "Of the cloudless heavenly light:", "Another loves earth and November more dearly", "Because without them, he sees clearly,", "The sky would be nothing more to his eye", "Than he, in any case, is to the sky;", "He loves even the mud whose dyes", "Renounce all brightness to the skies." ], "linecount": "36" } ]