My November Guest
My November Guest - meaning Summary
Solace in Bleak November
The speaker addresses Sorrow as a feminine guest who delights in the bleakness of late autumn. She finds beauty in bare trees, mist, and empty fields, and her pleasure compels the speaker to listen and reconsider his own sensibilities. Though he has long known and loved November’s austere landscape, her praise deepens that appreciation and reproves him for not always seeing as she does. The poem frames melancholy as a companion that reveals and enhances the quiet beauty of desolation rather than merely causing pain.
Read Complete AnalysesMy 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
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