November 2024 - November

The season of brilliance known as Fall Foliage is now past its peak. Nature, never one to indulge in instant gratification, will keep us waiting until next year for such glory to return again. Indeed, as October fades into November, the comparison to the morning after a much anticipated celebration is difficult to avoid. Whatever emotional let-down we might feel is physically reflected in the dull, dry leaves skittering and piling around our feet. Yet, as this month’s poem reminds us, “The loss of beauty is not always loss.” The trees’ (and our) restorative chill hours await.

November

by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;
Long have I listened to the wailing wind,
And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;
For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:
The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;
The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail
Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,
The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:
They weave a chaplet for the Old Year’s heir;
These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,
Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;
The naked, silent trees have taught me this, —
The loss of beauty is not always loss!

Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard, born in 1823 in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, was a poet, novelist, essayist, and literary critic. Her work appeared in such notable publications as Harper’s Monthly and Atlantic Monthly and was hailed at the time by such literary luminaries as Nathaniel Hawthorne (a distant relative) and W.D. Howells. She died in 1902. Her poem, “November,” is in the Public Domain.