Last Poems (Housman)/In midnights of November

by Alfred Edward Housman

XIX

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.