Two poems for November by Thomas Hood

• No!
• No sun—no moon!
• No morn—no noon—
• No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
• No sky—no earthly view—
• No distance looking blue—
• No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”—
• No end to any Row—
• No indications where the Crescents go—
• No top to any steeple—
• No recognitions of familiar people—
• No courtesies for showing ‘em—
• No knowing ‘em!—
• No travelling at all—no locomotion,
• No inkling of the way—no notion—
• “No go”—by land or ocean—
• No mail—no post—
• No news from any foreign coast—
• No Park—no Ring—no afternoon gentility—
• No company—no nobility—
• No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
• No comfortable feel in any member—
• No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
• No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,—
• November!

• From “Autumn”
• I saw old Autumn in the misty morn  
• Stand shadowless like Silence, listening  
• To silence, for no lonely bird would sing  
• Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,  
• Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;—  
• Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright  
• With tangled gossamer that fell by night,  
• Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

• Where are the songs of Summer?—With the sun,  
• Oping the dusky eyelids of the south,  
• Till shade and silence waken up as one,  
• And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.  
• Where are the merry birds?—Away, away,  
• On panting wings through the inclement skies,  
• Lest owls should prey  
• Undazzled at noonday,  
• And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. 

• Where are the blooms of Summer?—In the west,  
• Blushing their last to the last sunny hours,  
• When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest 
• Like tearful Proserpine, snatch’d from her flow’rs  
• To a most gloomy breast.  
• Where is the pride of Summer,—the green prime,—  
• The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three  
• On the moss’d elm; three on the naked lime 
• Trembling,—and one upon the old oak-tree!  
• Where is the Dryad’s immortality?—  
• Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,  
• Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through  
• In the smooth holly’s green eternity. 

Thomas Hood (1799-1845) was an English poet and humorist who was considered by some critics to be the premiere poet writing between the generation of Shelly and that of Tennyson. He writings appeared regularly in The London Magazine, Athenaeum and Punch. In 1821, Hood took over the editorship of The London Magazine from his friend, John Scott, who was killed in a duel. This position opened up the London literary world for him, and he soon was rubbing inky elbows with other renowned writers and poets of his generation, including Charles Lamb, Thomas de Quincey, and John Clare.