November is a time for nostalgia, remembrances of Thanksgivings passed as the family grew with children adding spouses and grandchildren. In our troubled and troubling world, memories of past times, and their innocence, are surprisingly comforting. Simpler times, some long passed.
In his November poem in “The Shepherd’s Calendar,” John Clare (1793-1864) nostalgically remembers the life of a lowly English shepherd: misty mornings, calling the unseen flock, “toil hath time to play and industry delights.” Mr. Clare is recognized as one the great English-language nature poets.
The Shepherd’s Calendar – November
John Clare
The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, ‘tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.
For days the shepherds in the fields may be,
Nor mark a patch of sky – blindfold they trace,
The plains, that seem without a bush or tree,
Whistling aloud by guess, to flocks they cannot see.
The owlet leaves her hiding-place at noon,
And flaps her grey wings in the doubling light;
The hoarse jay screams to see her out so soon,
And small birds chirp and startle with affright;
Much doth it scare the superstitious wight,
Who dreams of sorry luck, and sore dismay;
While cowboys think the day a dream of night,
And oft grow fearful on their lonely way,
Fancying that ghosts may wake, and leave their graves by day.
Thus wears the month along, in checker’d moods,
Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;
One hour dies silent o’er the sleepy woods,
The next wakes loud with unexpected storms;
A dreary nakedness the field deforms –
Yet many a rural sound, and rural sight,
Lives in the village still about the farms,
Where toil’s rude uproar hums from morn till night
Noises, in which the ears of Industry delight.
At length the stir of rural labour’s still,
And Industry her care awhile forgoes;
When Winter comes in earnest to fulfil
His yearly task, at bleak November’s close,
And stops the plough, and hides the field in snows;
When frost locks up the stream in chill delay,
And mellows on the hedge the jetty sloes,
For little birds – then Toil hath time for play,
And nought but threshers’ flails awake the dreary day.
Happy November traditions and memories.
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