November

Ernest W. Watson

November


The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-grey, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.

Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintery white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor grey,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.

Archibald Lampman

 

Word by word, line by line, Lampman builds the scene. Layer on layer, his description of the  sights and sounds accumulate to create a moment so real it feels like I could step right in. 

"Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,

Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way..."

 

Each poet has their strong points, and Lampman is wonderful with drawing the reader right into the scene. If I were going to choose desert island poetry, I would take Lampman - round about noon a poem like this would cool me right down. This particular poem has a lovely slow rhythm I find mesmerizing, a little like Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening". The mood is similar. Maybe it's a snowfall effect, lulling and drowsy.

"I alone

Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor grey,

Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream."

In November

"Goldfinch", Robert Bateman

In November

With loitering step and quiet eye,

Beneath the low November sky,

I wandered in the woods, and found

A clearing, where the broken ground

Was scattered with black stumps and briers,

And the old wreck of forest fires.

 It was a bleak and sandy spot,

And, all about, the vacant plot

Was peopled and inhabited

By scores of mulleins long since dead.

A silent and forsaken brood

n that mute opening of the wood,

So shrivelled and so thin they were,

So gray, so haggard, and austere,

Not plants at all they seemed to me,

But rather some spare company

Of hermit folk, who long ago,

Wandering in bodies to and fro,

Had chanced upon this lonely way,

And rested thus, till death one day

Surprised them at their compline prayer,

And left them standing lifeless there.

There was no sound about the wood

Save the wind's secret stir. I stood

Among the mullein-stalks as still

As if myself had grown to be

One of their sombre company,

A body without wish or will.

And as I stood, quite suddenly,

Down from a furrow in the sky

The sun shone out a little space

Across that silent sober place,

Over the sand heaps and brown sod,

The mulleins and dead goldenrod,

And passed beyond the thickets gray,

And lit the fallen leaves that lay,

Level and deep within the wood,

A rustling yellow multitude.

And all around me the thin light,

So sere, so melancholy bright,

Fell like the half-reflected gleam

Or shadow of some former dream;

A moment's golden revery

Poured out on every plant and tree

A semblance of weird joy, or less,

A sort of spectral happiness;

And I, too, standing idly there,

With muffled hands in the chill air,

Felt the warm glow about my feet,

And shuddering betwixt cold and heat,

Drew my thoughts closer, like a cloak,

While something in my blood awoke,

A nameless and unnatural cheer,

A pleasure secret and austere.

Archibald Lampman

“Weird joy”, “Spectral happiness.” “A nameless and unnatural cheer.” Really now. Unnatural cheer! Explain that! “Melancholy bright.” I wish I could have met Mr. Lampman. I know I would have liked him. He speaks my language. Can you find the goldfinch in the painting?

Evening

Clifford Webb

Evening

From upland slopes I see the cows file by,

Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,

By dusking fields and meadows shining pale

With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,

A peevish night-hawk in the western sky

Beats up into the lucent solitudes,

Or drops with gliding wing. The stilly woods

Grow dark and deep, and gloom mysteriously.

Cool night winds creep, and whisper in mine ear.

The homely cricket gossips at my feet.

From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear,

Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break sweet

In full Pandean chorus. One by one

Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.

Archibald Lampman

“Meadows shining pale with moon-tipped dandelions.”

“The stilly woods grow dark and deep…”

 I have an image of a box being passed to me with this poem inside it, a gift I can enjoy over and over again. I put it in my pocket and carry it with me wherever I go, wherever life takes me. I don’t know Lampman, and he doesn’t know me, but we share this place, this moment - and it’s beautiful.

Music

Carl Vilhelm Holsoe

Music

Move on, light hands, so strongly tenderly,
Now with dropped calm and yearning undersong,
Now swift and loud, tumultuously strong,
And I in darkness, sitting near to thee,
Shall not only hear, and feel, but shall not see,
One hour made passionately bright with dreams,
Keen glimpses of life's splendour, dashing gleams
Of what we would, and what we cannot be.

Surely not painful ever, yet not glad,
Shall such hours be to me, but blindly sweet,
Sharp with all yearning and all fact at strife,
Dreams that shine by with unremembered feet,
And tones that like far distance make this life
Spectral and wonderful and strangely sad. 


Archibald Lampman

"Spectral and wonderful and strangely sad", each one of those words is true of my experience of listening to music. There's nothing like it, is there? I like the image of someone listening to music in the dark. We've all done this, we know what it's like to be in that liquid flow, to have it draw up memories, emotions, colours, scenes. Lampman wrote this before stereos and ipods, so it was more than sound, it was human touch, a moment never to be repeated. How wonderful it is, to experience that. 

 

A January Morning

Boris Kustodiev

A January Morning

The glittering roofs are still with frost; each worn

Black chimney builds into the quiet sky

Its curling pile to crumble silently.

Far out to westward on the edge of morn,

The slender misty city towers up-borne

Glimmer faint rose against the pallid blue;

And yonder on those northern hills, the hue

Of amethyst, hang fleeces dull as horn.

And here behind me come the woodmen's sleighs

With shouts and clamorous squeakings; might and main

Up the steep slope the horses stamp and strain,

Urged on by hoarse-tongued drivers—cheeks ablaze,

Iced beards and frozen eyelids—team by team,

With frost-fringed flanks, and nostrils jetting steam.

Archibald Lampman

 This is as close to being transported into a scene as you get. For the length of time it takes to read the poem, I am  there. So I read it slowly.

 

A Forest Path in Winter

Gustaf Fjaestad

A Forest Path in Winter

Along this secret and forgotten road

All depths and forest forms, above, below,

Are plumed and draped and hillocked with the snow

A branch cracks now and then, and its soft load

Drifts by me in a thin prismatic shower;

Else not a sound, but vistas bound and crossed

With sheeted gleams and sharp blue shadows, frost,

And utter silence. In his glittering power

The master of mid-winter reveries 

Holds all things buried soft and strong and deep.

The busy squirrel has his hidden lair;

And even the spirits of the stalwart trees

Have crept into their utmost roots, and there,

Upcoiled in the close earth, lie fast asleep.

Archibald Lampman

Lampman has a gift for writing nature poems, especially poems about snow. There are so many to choose from. And Gustaf Fjaestad has a gift for snow paintings - again, we're spoiled for choice. This poem and painting both invoke that sense of the world being muted and insulated by snow. Lovely. (I like that word "upcoiled" as well.)