Letter in November by Sylvia Plath

Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----

My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy balls
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

                                Sylvia Plath 1932-1963

Burning Leaves

Burning Leaves, November  

THESE are the folios of April, 

All the library of spring, 

Missals gilt and rubricated 

With the frost's illumining.

Ruthless, we destroy these treasures, 

Set the torch with hand profane-- 

Gone, like Alexandrian vellums, 

Like the books of burnt Louvain!

Yet these classics are immortal: 

O collectors, have no fear, 

For the publisher will issue 

New editions every year. 

                                         Christopher Morley

November Night

LISTEN . . . 

With faint dry sound, 

Like steps of passing ghosts, 

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees 

And fall. 

                                   Adelaide Crapsey

November by Walter de la Mare

There is wind where the rose was, 
Cold rain where sweet grass was, 
And clouds like sheep 
Stream o'er the steep 
Grey skies where the lark was. 

Nought warm where your hand was, 
Nought gold where your hair was, 
But phantom, forlorn, 
Beneath the thorn, 
Your ghost where your face was. 

Cold wind where your voice was, 
Tears, tears where my heart was, 
And ever with me, 
Child, ever with me, 
Silence where hope was. 

                                       Walter de la Mare