Poetry Sunday: At day-close in November by Thomas Hardy

When we moved to this house thirty-four years ago, the large yard, front and back, was bare except for the grass and a couple of small trees. We immediately got to work to change all that, planting trees and making beds for shrubs and perennials, and setting up a vegetable garden. The yard today would be unrecognizable to one who knew it only from thirty-five years ago. In the front yard, the tall live oaks and red oak spread their limbs in a protective canopy, and I'm sure that the children who walk by our house every day on their way to and from school cannot conceive that there was ever "a time when no tall trees grew here." But we set every tree in our "June time and now they obscure the sky."

At day-close in November

by Thomas Hardy

The ten hours’ light is abating,

And a late bird wings across,

Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,

Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noontime,

Float past like specks in the eye;

I set every tree in my June time,

And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here

Conceive that there never has been

A time when no tall trees grew here,

That none will in time be seen.