November

“November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.”
–  Elizabeth Coatsworth

“Walked for half an hour in the garden.  A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn.  The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief.  A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys.  Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.”
–   Henri Frederic Amiel 

“So dull and dark are the November days.
The lazy mist high up the evening curled,
And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;
The place we occupy seems all the world.”
–   John Clare, November

“Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, are are then prepared to ignore them until the spring.
I am quite sure that a garden doesn’t like to be ignored like this.  It doesn’t like to be covered in dust sheets, as though
it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter.  Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful
it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance.”
–   Beverley Nichols

“When the trees their summer splendor
Change to raiment red and gold,
When the summer moon turns mellow,
And the nights are getting cold;
When the squirrels hide their acorns,
And the woodchucks disappear;
Then we know that it is autumn,
Loveliest season of the year.”
–   Carol L. Riser, Autumn

“November’s sky is chill and drear,
November’s leaf is red and sear.”
–   Sir Walter Scott

 

 The wild November come at last
Beneath a veil of rain;
The night winds blows its folds aside,
Her face is full of pain.
The latest of her race, she takes
The Autumn’s vacant throne:
She has but one short moon to live,
And she must live alone.”
–  Richard Henry Stoddard, November