Monday, October 31, 2005

November Guest

The Writer's Almanac has Robert Frost's "My November Guest" as its poem today. It's one of my all time favorites, so enjoy.

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
For they are better for her praise.

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This poem appeals to me today because it invites me to inhabit its imagery: "the sodden pasture lane" and "silver now with clinging mist," and "The desolate, deserted trees, / The faded earth, the heavy sky."

With Robert Frost, the form is there, and the metaphor is there, but the greatest pleasure for me is often the way he evokes natural images, particularly images of the changing of seasons, and the way those natural images stand as a surrogate for the narrator's inner feelings.

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