C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Walter Malone (1866–1915)
November in the South
T
Of hickory-nuts and acorns to the ground,
The croak of rain-crows and the blue-jay’s call,
The woodman’s axe that hews with muffled sound.
That still retains a dash of crimson hue,
An old woodpecker chatters forth a note
About the better summer days he knew.
With ragweeds and with thistles at its door,
While withered cypress-vines hang tattered strands
About its falling roof and rotting floor.
Save when the walnuts patter on the earth,
Or when by winds the hectic leaves are stirred
To dance like witches in their maniac mirth.
Half honeycombed by yellowhammer beaks;
Near by, a dwarfed and twisted apple bears
Its fruit, brown-red as Amazonian cheeks.
Like our own aching hearts, when first we knew
The one love of our life was not returned,
Or first we found an old-time friend untrue.
Is welcomed by the owl with frenzied glee;
The fat opossum, like a satyr, soon
Blinks at its light from yon persimmon-tree.
Amid his scattered spoils of ripened corn,
The cry of negroes and the yelp of hounds,
The wild rude pealing of a hunter’s horn.
Until we seem to wander in a cloud,
Far, far away upon some elfin strand
Where sorrow drapes us in a mildewed shroud.
To break the desolation of the spell,
Save one sad mocking-bird in boughs near by,
Who sings like Tasso in his madman’s cell;
Like high-born Leonora, lingering there,
Haughty and splendid in the lonesome night,
Is pale with passion in her dumb despair.