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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both �


The first lines of this collection.








1916. Two years after North of Boston, but a little further from the city, seemingly. Not so many conversations, more short poems. The increasing distance from the city's "civilization" seemed to me to occasion some pretty dark poetry, not all by any means, but poems about a woman's unhappy, barren life (The Hill Wife), about two kids starting a fire in the forest just for the excitement of watching the burn (The Bonfire), about a terrible accident, with a very hill-people-like denouement ("Out, Out �"), about an enigmatic � what � is it a murder? � I'm not sure (The Vanishing Red). So these "dark" poems, of varying shades and intensities, reveal an aspect of the mountain culture up there north of Boston both astonishing and unpleasant.

Other poems easier to read. A couple long conversation poems that I enjoyed (In the Home Stretch, Snow).

Not really any "theme" that I could see - other than a newness of experience produced by contacts with people and with nature that are different than those encountered closer to the city. Wilder, more primitive, more solitary too - thus producing more elemental emotion. In some way or other I encountered these sorts of emotions in The Exposed Nest, Range-Finding, The Telephone, Hyla Brook, Bond and Free, Birches, and Brown's Descent.

Then there were a few that evoked a more recognizable response: The Road Not Taken, The Telephone, Birches, A Time to Talk, The Gum-Gatherer (complicated rhyming structure with a nice rhythm), and The Sound of Trees.

Perhaps after all what I think is that Frost seems to surprise me from poem to poem more consistently than I'm used to, even given my fairly limited exposure (still) to poetry.


some poems and comments


These two the shortest

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.


and


Range-Finding

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a groundbirds' nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed,
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.


"Out, Out �"

warning
(view spoiler)[
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper". At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap �
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand,
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all �
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart �
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off �
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then � the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little � less � nothing! and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the dead one, turned to their affairs.
(hide spoiler)]
how to comment? about a poem �


The Sound of Trees

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth from somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.



The Road Not Taken

first poem becomes last

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim.
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I �
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

� who can read that and not catch their breath � one of his classics



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