Posts tagged robert frost
Posts tagged robert frost
I’ve posted this before. But it’s comfort, so I am posting it again.
“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, the concluding stanza of “Two Tramps in Mud Time.”
Comfort, and a goal. My object in living is to unite.
“The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither,
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither,
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question “Whither?”
Robert Frost, from “Reluctance”
The problem of the poem is all in the last quoted line (which is not, I should add, the actual end of the poem). Feet may carry you on your quest, but such a thing is always chosen by the heart. That’s what makes it a story.
“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, from “Acquainted With the Night”
Last night I dreamt that one of my friends was reciting this poem for me as we walked together. It was a good dream.
“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, the last stanza of “Two Tramps in Mud Time”
Frost is another of my favorite poets. His language is deceptively simple - straightforward, not at all the cliche of poetic, and yet rich and evocative. Sometimes, as here, transcendent. These lines also played a significant role in The Arm of the Starfish, by Madeleine L’Engle.
