"November"

November

Now comes that marvelous splendor of the air

         That brings a sudden glow to languid eyes,

         And that rich topaz flushing of the skies

That sets dull pulses thrilling. Wide and bare

Lie the shorn hop fields; and the pink mists loom

         Upon the swelling bosom of the sea,

         Till touched with sunset’s luminous mystery

They seem far fields of oleander bloom.

At dark the Fog arises, pale and still,

         And spreads her draperies, glistening and white,

         Upon the shivering body of the night,

But draws them back at dawn about the hill; 

         While pushes upward through the silver hush

         The enraptured lyric of the sunrise thrush.

"November" as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Voice of April-Land (1903).

A draft of "November" on onionskin paper, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.