Any other Robert Frost fans out there ?

Oh, yes, Fedral. I love then all. The Road Not Taken...Stopping by Woods...Fire and Ice....the one that is still rather enigmatic is Love and a question. There's another called The Runaway that is beautiful. I like the one you posted, too.

I like Robert Frost.

I love the poem with a horse and shrubs and and, you know. that one. i'll fish it out somewhere.
it reminds me of pushkin so much.

Any other Robert Frost fans
Letty mentioned "Fire and Ice". Here's the text:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.


I think it's my all-time favorite Frost poem.

(jjorge raises his hand)

"I'm a Frost fan too!"




My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
--Robert Frost--

This and seven other Frost poems were set to music in 1959 by composer Randall Thompson in a suite called "Frostiana." It's available at Amazon.com on a CD called "Testament of Freedom."

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep

Happy Holidays, all.

P.D. Set to music? Well, all poems were meant to be, I suppose. Many critics have interpreted Stopping by Woods as a death wish. I still feel that it was a moment in Frost's life when he wanted to simply "drop out"..... 'course I never thought "Go Not Gentle into that Good Night" was about dying, either.

Happy New Year, my friend.

bookmark

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I have been one acquainted with the night--

I have been one acquainted with the night
I have walked out in rain-and back in rain
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
-When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost rox my sox!!!! I absolutely LOVE him....almost as much as Keats....

TMW,

Below is one of my Frost favorites. I particularly like the third stanza.


"TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME"

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
(Robert Frost)

Frost's work is amazing, particularly Nothing Gold Can Stay.

I wrote a poem that was inspired by his works. Feel free to give criticisms/comments, as I haven't posted it much and I'm looking for feedback.

The Nature of Reason

Thy Book hath preached away pristine,
With faith for gold in the stead of green,
Hath forsaken gold unpolished,
With hopes of perverted preservation,
But nature has seen no sheen abolished,
On any an occasion,

As with the pond, sick and still,
Where death and decay won't even stay,
And let alone life long lasting,
Nothing idle knows recasting,
Until the day reborn the mill,
Will serve to send more water downhill.

northcutt, Welcome to A2K. I love the first stanza of your poem, but the second one could use a little polishing. If you're going to use a rhyme scheme, be true to it.

Frost is one of the better contemporary poets. There is also this one.

Stars

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like somw snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.