My November Guest

It has only been one week since Thanksgiving and already this

year's celebration has been long forgotten in the wake of extended

Black Friday sales and the crass commercialism that has come to define

the approach of Christmas in America today.  The last days of

 November seem to be passing by unnoticed too.  It makes me 
 a little sad that the beautiful season of autumn is nearly gone
now, and yet, I am reminded that it is important to find
something beautiful to appreciate in every day of the year.

I think Robert Frost might have been feeling the same way

when he wrote the following poem.

November Freshet
John Ottis Adams
(1851-1927)
American Impressionist
Member of the Hoosier Group

My sorrow, when she's here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are as 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,

And they are better for her praise.

Pumpkins

(1969)

Andrew Newell Wyeth

(1917-2009)

American artist and realist painter

"My November Guest"

(1915)

Robert Lee Frost

(1874-1963)

American poet
Poet laureate of Vermont