One of my favourite poets, John Masefield reflects on this month; we are only two days into it so to early to say if it will be a ‘lifeless month’ this ear. Yesterday was sunny and warm, today, once a heavy sea fog evaporated it was again a day of sunshine although the evening soon became quite nippy.
Here is Masefield’s reflections on November:
Beauty retires; the blood out of the earth
Shrinks, the stalk dries, lifeless November still
Drops the brown husk of April’s greenest birth.
Through the thinned beech clump I can see the hill.
So withers man, and though his life renews
In Aprils of the soul, an autumn comes
Which gives an end, not respite, to the thews
That bore his soul through the world’s martyrdoms.
Then all the beauty will be out of mind,
Part of man’s store, that lies outside his brain.
Touch to the dead and vision to the blind,
Drink in the desert, bread, eternal grain;
Part of the untilled field that beauty sows
With flowers untold, where quickened spirit goes.
Lois Elsden 