A cold November wind sweeps across the moors, shrieking through empty corridors, and an old man hears more than weather. The sound seems to carry voices from his past—people long dead whose words still shake him, like remembered footsteps echoing in old rooms. He is already burdened by grief or guilt, and the landscape refuses to let him rest. Outside, thin brown leaves skip across the stones with a freezing whisper. Now and then they pause, as if to remind him how lifeless everything is, before scattering again like withered souls. The mood is bleak, eerie, and painfully lonely: nature feels almost deliberate in its cruelty, and the old man is trapped between the shouting wind and the taunting silence of the leaves.
The Pity of the Leaves — Summary
Vengeful across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, Words out of lips that were no more to speak -- Words of the past that shook the old man's cheek Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors. And then there were the leaves that plagued him so! The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then They stopped, and stayed there -- just to let him know How dead they were; but if the old man cried, They fluttered off like withered souls of men.