Posted on 01/10/2014 6:17:52 PM PST by not2be4gotten.com
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.
One must be very careful of the paths one selects...
My inconclusive travel plans for 2014 (received via email):
I have been in many places, but I’ve never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can’t go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.
I’ve also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.
I have, however, been in Sane. They don’t have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work.
I would like to go to Conclusions, but they say you have to jump, and I’m not too much on physical activity anymore.
I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often.
I’ve been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.
Sometimes I’m in Capable, and I go there more often as I’m getting older.
One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!
I may have been in Continent, but I don’t remember what country I was in. It’s an age thing. They tell me it is very wet and damp there.
Tuesday night during the half-time of the local high school basketball game, a friend of mine whose kid plays on the team started teaching this to me. He made me memorize it last stanza first.
It’s my goal to learn it and recite it well within the month. Thanks for posting!
Oldplayer
Let's see…
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 snowy woods and 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's 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
Such perfection of mood, image, rhyme and meter.
KNew I’d gotten one line wrong…”between the woods and frozen lake”
I’ve always loved this one...
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Nicolai Dalchimsky: 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. Remember. Miles to go before I sleep.
“Stopping by a Wood on a Snowy Evening”
The best American poem ever.
I just posted the second best here for general discussion.
I am going through a rough time in my life and both poems inspire me (second to the scriptures)
Who’s Nicolai?
well, here’s a blessing from Mamzelle. Bless you.
His poems are not taught anymore because he is dead, white, straight and male.
No—do tell.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
******
But if he only took one road there is no basis for comparison because he can’t know what would have occurred on the road more travelled, the road he didn’t take.
Rent it, you’ll almost certainly like it.
Schroedinger’s cat.
Tonight, after a month of emailing
back-and-forth, I decided to blow off a guy.
Without asking me, he made several presumptions.
I’m not that hard up -— bye-bye!
Path not taken........
Guess I’ll never know for sure, but trusted
my instincts.
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 gray
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.
Frost was a genius. He’s the only one I know who can put a sigh in a poem without using a word.
“And miles to go before I sleep
(Sigh)
And miles to go before I sleep.”
I swear I hear that sigh every time I read this poem.
The thing that I like most about Frost is that you can tell that he loved his audience. He cared. He put everything he had into those poems. I find that totally lacking in modern American poetry. Today’s poetry is one MFA writing to try and impress another MFA. Most of it is the diary of the dysfunctional. Frost writes about a stone wall and a young horse in his first snowstorm. Simple things beautifully described. The work of a master.
My favorite is…”the only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake…” Now, don’t you just smell the snow? The sweet, ozone-y smell of snow falling?
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