Poems (Hardy)/A November poppy
A NOVEMBER POPPY
IN a low brown meadow on a day
Down by the autumn sea,
I saw a flash of sudden light
In a sweep of lonely gray;
As if a star in a clouded night
One moment had looked on me
And then withdrawn; as if the spring
Had sent an oriole back to sing
A silent song in color, where
Other silence was too hard to bear.
Down by the autumn sea,
I saw a flash of sudden light
In a sweep of lonely gray;
As if a star in a clouded night
One moment had looked on me
And then withdrawn; as if the spring
Had sent an oriole back to sing
A silent song in color, where
Other silence was too hard to bear.
I found it and left it in its place,
The sun-born flower in cloth of gold
That April owns, but cannot hold
From spending its glory and its grace
On months that always love it less,
But take its splendid alms in their distress.
The sun-born flower in cloth of gold
That April owns, but cannot hold
From spending its glory and its grace
On months that always love it less,
But take its splendid alms in their distress.
Back I went through the gray and the brown,
Through the weed-woven trail to the distant town;
The flower went with me, fairly wrought
Into the finest fiber of my thought.
Through the weed-woven trail to the distant town;
The flower went with me, fairly wrought
Into the finest fiber of my thought.