Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OCTOBER, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OCTOBER, by                    
First Line: There comes a month in the weary year
Last Line: The vanished hounds and the lucky shots
Subject(s): October


THERE comes a month in the weary year, --
A month of leisure and healthful rest;
When the ripe leaves fall and the air is clear, --
October, the brown, the crisp, the blest.

My life has little enough of bliss;
I drag the days of the odd eleven,
Counting the time that shall lead to this, --
The month that opens the hunter's heaven.

And oh! for the mornings crisp and white,
With the sweep of the hounds upon the track;
The bark-roofed cabin, the camp-fire's light,
The break of the deer, and the rifle's crack!

Do you call this trifling? I tell you, friend,
A life in the forest is past all praise;
Give me a dozen such months on end,
You may take my balance of years and days.

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,
And a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;
And men grow withered before their prime,
With the curse paved in on the lanes and streets;

And lungs are choked, and shoulders are bowed,
In the smoking reek of mill and mine;
And Death stalks in on the struggling crowd,
But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine.

And of all to which the memory clings,
There is nought so sweet as the sunny spots
Where our shanties stood by the crystal springs,
The vanished hounds and the lucky shots.





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