Frost: "My November Guest"-- perfect poem for today, eh?

One of my favorite season-related poems is one by Robert Frost, titled "My November Guest." It's a fabulous example of extended metaphor and personification, to begin with, which makes it a good choice to use with classes at school. That said, and before we start picking the poem apart for it's "usefulness," I just want to marvel at the poem as a whole. Sorrow as a guest, one who praises the "bare November days"-- yeah, I like that. I particularly like the idea of sorrow not being a permanent companion, but one who shows up for a while, especially in the later autumn. I recognize that emotion myself, and Frost handles it deftly, with a quiet and gentle touch. 

It's good to be reminded that there is a beauty in the spareness of the landscape, and that it is also a good idea to, as needed, embrace and appreciate the quietness of loss and sorrow. And the birds, again! They are gone, and the trees! So many Frost poems have birds and trees. The landscape is a silent character, one that, in this poem, truly becomes one.

I hope you like it, too.

C

Here's the poem:

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 grey
     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.

This poem is in the public domain.