Explore "November" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs, / Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still; / Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill / Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims / Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims / The ageratum's blue that banks the rill; / And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill, / And shakes it free of the last seed that swims. / Down goes the day despondent to its close: / And now the sunset's hands of copper build / A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars / The day, in fierce, barbarian repose, / Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled, / Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.
/ II. There is a booming in the forest boughs; / Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees: / The storm is at his wildman revelries, / And earth and heaven echo his carouse. / Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house / Of cloud, the moon looks, -- like a face one sees / In nightmare, -- hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze / Stooping above with white, malignant brows. / The isolated oak upon the hill, / That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands / A Titan head black in a sea of blood, / Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill / To the vast fingering of innumerable hands -- / Spirits of tempest and of solitude.