No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds—
November!

Thomas Hood (1799–1845), a leading English poet and humorist of the late Romantic period, often mixed comic exaggeration with sharp social observation. The lines quoted come from his poem “November,” a seasonal sketch that turns the month into a catalogue of negations—everything pleasant seems absent. Hood wrote many such topical or occasional poems for periodical publication, and “November” belongs to that tradition of light verse that nonetheless captures real physical discomfort and urban dreariness in early-19th-century England. The poem’s piling up of “No…” reflects both the weather’s bleakness and a broader mood of deprivation associated with late autumn.

The passage works by accumulation: a rhythmic list of what November lacks—warmth, ease, shade, sunshine, insects, birds, fruit, flowers—until the month itself becomes a punchline. Hood’s technique is comic in its insistence, but the comedy underscores a genuine sensory truth: late autumn feels like nature’s withdrawal. The repeated negatives also suggest a psychological state, where the speaker’s world is defined by absence rather than presence. Ending on the single-word exclamation “November!” turns the month into an emblem of barrenness and discomfort, a miniature satire on seasonal misery and the human tendency to blame time and weather for emotional gloom.