Coming down onto the Western Slope off Wolf Creek Pass, November 1997

"My November Guest"

Robert Frost

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,

  Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

  She walks the sodden pasture lane.

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Her pleasure will not let me stay.

  She talks and I am fain to  list:

She's glad the birds are gone away,

She's glad her simple worsted gray

  Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

  The faded earth, there heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

  And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learn4e to know

  The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

  And they are better for her praise.

Maine, November 1979

 An early November climb of Mt. Adams, NH