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b"E Thomas read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\\n\\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\\n\\n---------------------------------------\\n\\nNovember\\nby Edward Thomas (1878 \\u2013 1917)\\n\\nNovember's days are thirty: \\nNovember's earth is dirty, \\nThose thirty days, from first to last; \\nAnd the prettiest things on ground are the paths \\nWith morning and evening hobnails dinted, \\nWith foot and wing-tip overprinted \\nOr separately charactered, \\nOf little beast and little bird. \\nThe fields are mashed by sheep, the roads \\nMake the worst going, the best the woods \\nWhere dead leaves upward and downward scatter. \\nFew care for the mixture of earth and water, \\nTwig, leaf, flint, thorn, \\nStraw, feather, all that men scorn, \\nPounded up and sodden by flood, \\nCondemned as mud.\\n\\nBut of all the months when earth is greener \\nNot one has clean skies that are cleaner. \\nClean and clear and sweet and cold, \\nThey shine above the earth so old, \\nWhile the after-tempest cloud \\nSails over in silence though winds are loud, \\nTill the full moon in the east \\nLooks at the planet in the west \\nAnd earth is silent as it is black, \\nYet not unhappy for its lack. \\nUp from the dirty earth men stare: \\nOne imagines a refuge there \\nAbove the mud, in the pure bright \\nOf the cloudless heavenly light: \\nAnother loves earth and November more dearly \\nBecause without them, he sees clearly, \\nThe sky would be nothing more to his eye \\nThan he, in any case, is to the sky; \\nHe loves even the mud whose dyes \\nRenounce all brightness to the skies.\\n\\nFirst aired: 25 November 2009\\n\\nFor hundreds more poetry readings, visit the Classic Poetry Aloud index.\\n\\nReading \\xa9 Classic Poetry Aloud 2009"