November

“ I go across the great Wheeler pasture. It is a cool but pleasant November afternoon. The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights, the air is so clear, and there are so many bare, polished, bleached or hoary surfaces to reflect the light. Few things are more exhilarating, if it is only moderately cold, than to walk over bare pastures, and see the abundant sheeny light, like a universal halo, reflected from the russet and bleached earth. The earth shines perhaps more than in spring, for the reflecting surfaces are less dimmed now. It is not a red, but a white light. ”

“ Yes, November is an old gypsy dame, but she is not always melancholy. She is the month of whom artists are especially fond. While she lacks the glow of midsummer, there is compensation for the absence of bloom and radiance in the ripening of all vegetation; there is still a touch of splendid color on the hills, and the grass is green with the aftermath of summer. Beautiful mists veil the mountain tops. There is an exquisite beauty in the tints of sepia and the rich brown tones of the landscapes and in the tender grays and clear blues of November skies. ”

“ November has its special beauty when the blue mists lurk in the depth of woodland ways, when the wet bracken glows like a peat fire, and toadstools of weird and wondrous colours adorn the damp wayside. And lovely are the rare days when the moor lies sheeted with snow, and every spray is set with diamonds. Presently in February comes a moment when a purple flush, like the bloom on a ripe plum, steals over the massed woodland, though yet no green leaf shows, and we know that life begins to stir. ”

“ Sometimes towards evening in dreary November, when the clouds hang heavy and low, covering all the sky, and the hills are solemn and sombre, and the wind is cold, and the lake black and sullen, a break in the dark veil lets through a splash of glorious sunshine. It is so very beautiful as it falls into the gloom that your breath draws in quick and you watch it with a thrill. ”

“ Such folk, at best, are but sisters in the brotherhood. [41]
And yet a November rain is but an August rain that has grown a beard and taken on the stalwart manners of the world. And the November wind, which piped madrigals in June and lazy melodies all the summer, has done no more than learn brisker braver tunes to befit the coming winter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companion for its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and who shall begrudge it here and there a chimney if it topple it in sport? ”

“ Some people like November, because it is the quietest month of the year—as quiet as somebody tired, who has just fallen asleep—and they love to see the fields lying dark and still, and the empty branches against the sky. ”

“ There had been stormy and windy weather, but now dawned on the earth one of those still, golden times of November, full of dreamy rest and tender calm. The skies above were blue and fair, and the waters of the curving bay were a downward sky—a magical under-world, wherein the crimson oaks, and the dusk plumage of the pine, and the red holly-berries, and yellow sassafras leaves, all flickered and glinted in wavering bands of color as soft winds swayed the glassy floor of waters. ”

“ On this morning in November London was in a gracious mood, and Hyde Park, coloured with autumn's pensive melancholy, sparkled in the sunlight. Snowy bits of cloud raced across the sky, like sails against the blue of the ocean. November leaves, lying thick upon the grass, stirred into life, and for an hour imagined the fickle wind to be a harbinger of spring. Children, with laughter that knew no other cause than the exhilaration of the morning, played and romped, weaving dreams into their lives and their lives into dreams. ”

“ They manage to look down upon the many of us who prefer the daisy fields to the time “when hills take on the noble lines of death.” But whims of the worshiper steal no splendor from the god. June has nothing to place beside a moonlit November night, whose shadow dance of multiform boughs is never seen through leaves, while shadows on the snow are hard of outline, unlike the illusive phantoms running over autumn’s brown grass. June has no flowers so quaint, pathetic, and austere as the trembling weeds of November. What does the goldenrod, white with age, care for frost? ”

“ And I thought how the yew
Between the window and the west his shadow threw,
Grave and immense,
Darkening the dark past thought and sense,
And how the moon would make the darkness heavenly bright:
But the moon gave no light.
NOVEMBER SKIES
Than these November skies
Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep;
Into their gray the subtle spies
Of colour creep,
Changing that high austerity to delight,
Till even the leaden interfolds are bright. ”

“ Sea-like through the meadow rolled:
Once my heart could hardly hold
All its pleasures. I remember,
In the flood of youth's delight
Separate joys were lost to sight.
That was summer! Now November
Sets the perfect flower apart;
Gives each blossom of the heart
Meaning, beauty, grace unknown,—
Blooming late and all alone.
November, 1899.
THE LILY OF YORROW Deep in the heart of the forest the lily of Yorrow is growing;
Blue is its cup as the sky, and with mystical odour o'erflowing ”

“ November’s sky is chill and drear,
November’s leaf is red and sear:
Late, gazing down the steepy linn,
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen, 5
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trill’d the streamlet through:
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and brier, no longer green, 10
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with double speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed. ”

“ We are no great admirers of the mere poetry and sentimentality of life, but, seeing it is November, suppose we indulge a little in the pensive mood. Let us take one of those pure transparent days which are only to be found at this season, and go to the southern declivity of some gentle swell where we may have the woods in our rear. Now look abroad to the south where the retiring summer seems yet to linger, and the autumn lies slumbering over the landscape. ”

“ Shall we look about us while the surly November winds blow over half the country, and the balmy November breezes glide over the other half, and whether Dame Nature smiles or frowns where we are, make all hearts light because of our brightness, and sympathy, and unselfishness? ”

“ And, in strange tracts of wildwood, all day long, They tell the story in surpassing song. November Now beats the first warm pulse of Summer—now There shines great glory on the mountain's brow. The face of heaven in the western sky, When falls the sun, is filled with Deity! And while the first light floods the lake and lea, The morning makes a marvel of the sea; The strong leaves sing; and in the deep green zones Of rock-bound glens the streams have many tones ”

“ Enter it in spring—the linnets sprinkle a song like audible sunlight—and yet the field is old. But November is its notable month. Its trees are all oaks and they have hardly lost a leaf; the leaves are falling continually from those smouldering sunset clouds of foliage, which, kingly rich, look as if they would never be poor. One skylark sings high over the field in the rainy sky. The blue rooks unsheathe themselves heavily from the branches and shine silverly and caw with genial voices. A pheasant explodes from a grass tussock underfoot. The air smells like the musky white wild rose ”

“ One must have felt the languor of an Italian summer, with its closed-shutter existence, its long days of reclusion, without exercise, without prospect, almost without light, to feel the intense delight a bright month of November can bring, with its pathways dry, its rivulets clear, its skies cloudless and blue,—to be able to be about again, to take a fast canter or a brisk walk, is enjoyment great as the first glow of convalescence after sickness. ”

“ But then the foliage of November is so rich, and glowing, and varied, that it may well supply the place of the gay blossoms of the spring; whilst all the flowers of the field or the garden could never make amends for the want of leaves,—that beautiful and graceful attire in which nature has clothed the rugged forms of trees—the verdant drapery to which the landscape owes its loveliness, and the forests their glory. ”

“ November—with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes—days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. ”

“ The most subtle charm of the woods in November is in those blue spaces which lie at so brief a distance in every avenue of meeting boughs, under every enclosing branch. This azure mist which gathers like still faint smoke has the spell of silent waters, of moonlight, of the pale rose of serene dawns. It has a light that is its own, as unique as that unnameable flame which burns in the core of the rainbow. The earth breathes it; it is the breath of the fallen leaves, the moss, the tangled fern, the undergrowth, the trees; it is the breath also of the windless grey-blue sky that leans so low. ”

“ Occasionally, the black clouds are driven back, and gleams of sunshine creep over the land. A southerly wind, too, occasionally breathes upon us, and it seems as if the genial warmth of autumn would triumph in the great contest of nature. But, as the days advance, the strength of winter increases, and we slide into December, when its dominion becomes complete. Like an unrelenting despot, it then binds the river and the lake in icy chains; it sweeps away the last vestige of summer, and marks the boundaries of its realm with a dazzling mantle of snow.
Such is November in New England. ”

“ Cold and bitter and bleak howled the November blast, and ruthlessly drove the sleet against the shivering panes, exposed without, though shielded within by Venetian folding shutters, on that gray morning, when a passing whisper from most unlovely and altogether unfaithful lips nerved me paradoxically to sudden resolution. ”

“ Of all the months of the year, November—in our climate—whether in town or country, bears the worst character. He is almost universally thought to be a sour, sulky, sullen, savage, dim, dull, dark, disconsolate, yet designing month—in fewer words, a month scarcely fit to live. ”

“ As November ruled them all.
Youth and spring are both alike;
Flowers rise and pleasures strike—
These, to fade, and those to be
Nothing in reality—
Till the heart is like a bed,
But, with yellow leaves o'erspread ”

“ Oh, Miss Oliver, just for one moment I’m really feeling quite young again—young and frivolous and silly. Did I ever say November was an ugly month? Why it’s the most beautiful month in the whole year. ”

“ May and June and October,
As you call and call
I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;
And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,
While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind. ”

“ But far north here, November is the artists' month par excellence, because, though touched with the frosts, the forests are not yet bare, and on the braes rising in loveliness on every hand the foliage, touched by the sunlight, gleams with every hue and tint, crimson of maple, bronze of beech or oak, brown of the elm, and dark-green of the waving pine, with higher up the silver stems of the weeping-birch. ”

“ But when the summer is over, when the majesty of July and August is past and gone and golden September gives place to rainy October, or, most of all, when dull, gloomy November covers the skies with its impenetrable veil of drab cloud and mist day after day and week after week, with scarcely an hour of sunshine, the utter dismalness and ugliness of the place are appalling. ”

“ What, then, if Summer’s glory has departed; if her skies are no longer overhead; her songs no longer fill the air; the odor of her blossoms no longer scent the breeze; is it not a poor wheel that can not spare one spoke? Nature is not so niggardly with her gifts in November as summer tourists, for instance, are apt to suppose. November is comparatively bare, it is true, and positively ragged; but it is not always safe to judge a man by his coat.
A jay is something more than a bird with blue feathers. October 23, 1889, it snowed violently for three hours, and the ground was white. ”

“ The west wind, blowing then in full liberty, made thicker yet round this abode those coats of fog that November places between earthly life and the sun. Evening comes quickly in autumn; the smallness of the windows added to the shortness of the days, and deepened the sad twilight in which the house was wrapped. ”

“ It seems as if these golden days of sparkling sunshine and nights of clear frost will never end, but rise and still rise as out of some great well of light. Never do I remember such a November—windless, exquisite, so that the glory of scarlet{266} leaf, usually so swiftly gone and evanescent, scattered into ruin by an hour’s wind, still flames in this long-drawn sunset of the year. ”