Alfred Edward Housman

Last Poems. 19. In Midnights of November

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.