The November Wind At Midnight

By W.A.

Annotations by Abby Army/JB

The sky is scowling on the earth
      With wrathful face,
And darkly-rolling clouds tumultuous rush
      Across the heavens
      As in a race;
Each scudding with noiseless step
  Through empty realms of space.

Among the leafless trees the wind
      In fury flies;
Now roaring like the distant thunder-peal
      On sultry eve;
      Anon it sighs,
Sad mem’ries walking in the soul,
  And then in silence dies.

Again it moans a plaintive dirge
      For faded flowers,
That bloomed in wild-wood and in shady dell,
      Or sweeter far,
      In fairy bowers,
Where love oft breathed its holy thoughts
  Through summer’s moonlight hours.

The rattling casement sends a chill
      Through every vein,
And creaking voices summon from their rest
      In mould’ring vaults
      A spectral train,
Who, flitting through the dark corridors,
  To nothing glide again!

Among the wrestling leaves it sweeps
      In church-yard lone,
Where weeping mourner often drops the tear
      While bending low
      O’er sculpted stone,
And Fancy might believe she heard
  From out the grave a groan.

Its solemn music stirs the heart
      Where all is gloom,
And softly whispers of the loved who sleep
      On dreamless bed
      Within the tomb,
Then wafts us to celestial shores
  Where they immortal bloom.

With sweetly melancholy notes
      That soothe my soul,
It singeth of that realm of purest bliss
      To which death leads— 
      Life’s radiant goal;
Where angry storms shall rise no more,
  While endless cycles roll.

W.A. “The November Wind At Midnight.” The Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine, American Periodicals 35, no. 1 (January 1850): 29.