“NOVEMBER.”
No sun—no moon—
No morn—no noon,—
No dawn—no dark—no proper time of day,—
No sky—no earthly view,—
No distance looking blue,—
No road—no street—no “’t other side the way,”—
No end to any row,—
No indications where the crescents go,—
No top to any steeple,—
No recognitions of familiar people,—
No courtesies for showing ’em,—
No knowing ’em.
No traveling at all—no locomotion,—
No inkling of the way—no motion,—
“No go”—by land or ocean,—
No mail—no post,—
No news from any foreign coast,—
No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility,—
No company—no nobility,—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,—
No comfortable feel in any member,—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,—
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,—
November.
Transitions from gay to grave are so much in the manner of Hood that you will not wonder if I sandwich between the playful production of his muse just quoted, and another still more grotesque to follow, an example of his verse, in which the bizarre yields entirely to the beautiful, the tricksy to the true, leaving “a gem of purest ray serene” for the coronal of pastoral poetry. It is the charming idyl,