In Midnights of November
by Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936)
In midnights of November, When Dead Man’s Fair is nigh, And danger in the valley, And anger in the sky, Around the huddling homesteads The leafless timber roars, And the dead call the dying And finger at the doors. Oh, yonder faltering fingers Are hands I used to hold; Their false companion drowses And leaves them in the cold. Oh, to the bed of ocean, To Africk and to Ind, I will arise and follow Along the rainy wind. The night goes out and under With all its train forlorn; Hues in the east assemble And cocks crow up the morn. The living are the living And dead the dead will stay, And I will sort with comrades That face the beam of day.
