SOME NOVEMBER DAYS IN IOWA 
“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.” 
Poor Thomas Hood! He lived in England. 
For him the yellow fog, the gray skies, the bleak 
winds, the cheerless rains. If he could have spent 
one November in Iowa he would never have 
pictured Autumn sitting melancholy and tearful, 
alone upon a mossy stone, reckoning up the dead 
and gone: 
“The year’s in the wane, 
There is nothing adorning, 
The night hath no eve. 
And the day has no morning. 
Cold winter gives warning.” 
Most of the British poets sang in a similar 
strain. Shelley writes a dirge for the “dead cold 
year,” and asks the months 
“From November to May 
In your saddest array 
To follow the bier 
Of the dead cold year 
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulcher.” 
