ind the old thatches and pent-houses flap,
In the wind of November, so savage and hard.
The crosses--and they are the arms of dead people--
The crosses that stand in the narrow churchyard
Fall prone on the sod
Like some great flight of black, in the acre of God.

The wind of November!
Have you met him, the savage wind, do you remember?
Did he pass you so fleet,
--Where, yon at the cross, the three hundred roads meet--
With distressfulness panting, and wailing with cold?
Yea, he who breeds fears and puts all things to flight,
Did you see him, that night
When the moon he o'erthrew--when the villages, old
In their rot and decay, past endurance and spent,
Cried, wailing like beasts, 'neath the hurricane bent?

Here comes the wind howling, that heralds dark weather,
The wind blowing infinite over the heather.
The wind with his trumpet that heralds November!

THE FISHERMEN

The spot is flaked with mist, that fills,
Thickening into rolls more dank,
The thresholds and the window-sills,
And smokes on every bank.

The river stagnates, pestilent
With carrion by the current sent
This way and that--and yonder lies
The moon, just like a woman dead,
That they have smothered overhead,
Deep in the skies.

In a few boats alone there gleam
Lamps that light up and magnify
The backs, bent over stubbornly,
Of the old fishers of the stream,
Who since last evening, steadily,
--For God knows what night-fishery--
Have let their black nets downward slow
Into the silent water go.
The noisome water there below.

Down in the river's deeps, ill-fate
And black mischances breed and hatch.
Unseen of them, and lie in wait
As for their prey. And these they catch
With weary toil--believing still
That simple, honest work is best--
At night, beneath the shifting mist
Unkind and chill.

So hard and harsh, yon clock-towers tell.
With muffled hammers, like a knell,
The midnight hour.
From tower to tower
So hard and harsh the midnights chime.
The midnights harsh of autumn time,
The weary midnights' bell.

The crew
Of fishers black have on their back
Nought save a nameless rag or two;
And their old hats distil withal,
And drop by drop let crumbling fall
Into their necks, the mist-flakes all.

The hamlets and their wretched huts
Are numb and drowsy, and all round
The willows too, and walnut trees,
'Gainst which the Easterly fierce breeze
Has waged its feud.
No bayings from the