Moms Favorite Poet
Justin...You surprise me! Don't you remember studying Robert Frost as a family project? He is a New England poet and many of his poems remind me of my childhood. Stone walls apple trees ,fall colors,crisp cold weather and lots of snow! I just love how his poems bring such peaceful pictures to my mind.Another favorite of mine is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I loved spending time in the woods as a child and still do whenever I get the chance! With snow on the ground is is so quiet and clean!
STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
by Robert Frost
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 sounds 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.
That poem brings me so much peace and gives me such yearning for getting away from it all and going for a walk in the woods.
I honestly think if more people took walks in the woods regularly there wouldn't be so many people on depression drugs.
Do any of you remember the Robert Frost record album that has him reciting his own poetry that we all listened to while we were studying him? I think I still have it.
O.K. some one else share a favorite poet! (Robert Service?)
posted by Anonymous @ 7:06 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
I surprise you because I knew it? Of course. I remembered it immediately. That was a fun study.
The only Robert Service poem that I remember off the top of my head is "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
Here is as much as I know by heart:
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold
The arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold
The arctic nights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of lake LeBarge, I cremated Sam McGee
It was late one day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail
Talk of your cold! Through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail
If our eyes we'd close then the lashes froze 'til sometimes we could not see
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to wimper was Sam McGee
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee where the cotton blooms and blows
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the pole God only knows
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd sooner live in hell.
This is a very long poem. I never could bring myself to memorize the whole thing. Time would be better spent memorizing scripture, I suppose. Do you remember the Anderson family? I think their daughter was friend's with Julia for a while. I can't remember the dad's name, but he was a strange person who seemed to enjoy living the homeless life even though he had a home. I remember him telling us once that he had been asked to read the poem above for a gathering of some kind and he surprised everyone when he quoted the whole thing by heart.
Justin
I like this one:
"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the traveler's head:
And he smote upon the door a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his gray eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
by Walter De La Mare - 1873-1956. N.T. Wright quotes from this poem in his book New Testament and The People of God.
cool...what a picture that paints in your mind!
Yeah Bob Anderson was quite a character..not a very good husband or father. I haven't seen any of them for several years.
You did well to quote that much from memory, Justin!
Luke, could you give us a brief summary of the poems meaning? I have read it through several times and I like and and would like it more when I knew what De La Mare was trying to say. Mom
I'm going to get your Pop to put something on here soon!XOXOXO
I'm not at all sure what de la mare's intent was in this poem, but I'll try to do some research on it tonight and get back to you.
N.T. Wright's comments in the book where I found the poem are good, though. He says,
"The still, soft sense of the forest is conveyed hy the string of "f's" in the fourth line; the return to silence, as of a pool once disturbed and now regaining stillness, by the 's's' in the penultimate line. We observe the effect, and explain the method. But there are broader effects worth pondering. The title of the poem is 'The Listeners'; not perhaps, the title we would choose ourselves ('The Lonely Horseman', The Moonlight Rider'?) It throws our attention in one direction even as the introduction to the poem is pointing elsewhere. It invites the reader to ponder: who are these phantom listeners? What are they doing? Who made the rider promise to come back, and where is he or she now? The tension between title and poem, only partly resolved by the listeners becoming the subject of the second half, combines with all the unexplained allusions (Tell them...I kept my word) to create the effect of a great and solemn mystery, to which we are nearly privy but not quite. We realize in fact, that we are witnessing the climax of a much longer and more complex drama, pregnant, out of sight, and full of significance. We are, in fact, drawn irresistably into the world of a story - and a story, moreover, which, like the modern 'short story' invites us to share its world as much by what it does not say as by what it does. The effect of the poem is more than the sum total of the rhymes, the assonance, the evocative setting. These all fall within (and of course, since the poem is a good one, they enhance) the wider effect of the story itself." etc. etc.
Wright goes on to say that there is a similar process going on in the biblical narratives.
Got to go eat some lunch! Happy Valentines Day to everyone!
Post a Comment
<< Home