THE BLEAK BEGINNING OF NOVEMBER.
WHEN the year fell damp and cold
Long the nights and short the days,
And the forests' fallen gold
Trodden in the miry ways:
Cloud-drifts trailing on the ridges,
Moorland rivers swollen and brown,
Lone birds from the dripping hedges,
Seeking shelter near the town:
Quite forgotten Summer's rays,
Closed we round the glowing ember,
And deem'd the cosiest of our days
The bleak beginning of November.
List'ning to the beating storm,
And the wind up in the vent-
Without, so cold-within, so warm-
Hearts so full of deep content;
Reading legends in the ashes,
Telling tales that charm and move:
Looking underneath long lashes
To devour the eyes we love :
Eyes are closed and hearts are still'd ;
But 'tis given me to remember
The more than Summer light that fill'd
The bleak beginning of November.
NOVEMBER MORNING.
ROARING, the wild south-wester
Fills the wide heaven with its clamour,
Ploughing the ocean and smiting
The land like a ponderous hammer.
Lo, how the vast grey spaces
Wrestle, and roll, and thunder,
Billow piled upon billow,
Closing and tearing asunder.
As if the deep raged with the anger
Of hosts of the fabulous kraken!
And the firm house shudders and trembles,
Beaten, buffetted, shaken!
Battles the gull with the tempest,
Struggling, and wavering, and faltering,
Soaring, and striving, and sinking,
Turning, its high course altering.
Down through the cloudy heaven
Notes from the wild geese are falling,
Cries like harsh bell-tones are ringing,
Echoing, clanging, and calling.
Plunges the schooner landward,
Swiftly the long seas crossing,
Close-reefed, seeking the harbour,
Half lost in the spray she is tossing.
A rift in the roof of vapour!
And stormy sunshine is streaming
To colour the grey, wild water,
Like chrysoprase, green and gleaming.
Cold and tempestuous ocean,
Ragged rock, brine-swept, and lonely,
Grasp of the long bitter winter,—
These things to gladden me only!
WHITE are the fields, and white are the firs,
Deep is the quiet-not a breath of wind stirs,-
The world seems, by magic, all muffled and still,
As if frozen to picture, both lowland and hill.
The moon casts a mellowy light over all,
And afar, like a whisper the sound of the fall
Is caught by the ear that, listening intent,
Might think it the voice of one toiling and spent,
And calling for aid as the owl's lonely cry,
Makes start the belated poor man passing by,
With his bundle of faggots to keep the keen cold
From invading the tenderer lambs of his fold;
And the sportsman returning with dog at his heel,
Begins even he-the sharp frost-breath to feel,
And beating his head upon his cold breast,
Surprises the birds half asleep in their nest:
Our God He is scattering His morsels so fine,
That the earth may be clothed with a raiment divine,
To guard it, and make it yield harvests again
When past are the seasons of snow-drift and rain!
So far as I know, there is no one knows
Much of the inner life of the crows;
But there's something human intertwined
With all their habits, and to my mind
The ancient noisy Rookery
Is as haunted a place as well can be.
The trees with old age are hollow and hoar,
With a rent near the root, like a half-open door;
And the ghastly sound of the hollow ground,
Starts up like a warning wherever you tread;
While the croaking, cawing overhead
Some quaint old woodland brogue appears;
For they say the crow lives a hundred years,
And you'll often see patriarchal crows
With big white carbuncles on their nose,
That must have taken that time to grow;
And by their cracked old croaks you know
They are come of an antiquated people:
The creak of the rusty vane on the steeple,
Or the swinging signboard over the way,
Speaks not from an older world than they.
And there's the dilapidated hall,
With its Gothic gables and chimneys tall :
It is part of the Rookery now, I suppose,
Grown into the old-fashioned life of the crows;
And I make no doubt if the chimneys could speak,
They would tell us the same old carbuncled beak
That croak'd on the roof when the old squire lay,
Fighting with Death for one more breath,
May be heard in the Rookery croaking to-day.
There's the old churchyard, too, they know full well
Without being told by the funeral bell,
When anything deadly is doing there,
And make narrowing circles in the air,
To reconnoitre, from on high,
The grave where the well-known corpse is to lie ;
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