Some Frost with some Larkin

[ellajam]

After Apple-Picking
~ Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

[ellajam]

I first read this at about age ten, I wish I could remember what I thought about it then, I guess enough for it to still sound familiar. From this end of life it says it all, with impressive technique.

He clings so firmly to his metaphor, turning it to examine every angle, reaching for every related image and making it all fit together. None seems to be thrown in only because he could, but used to it's fullest, by which I mean each means something to me.

He manages to be clear as a bell and still leave so much room to wander.

"My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round."

This morning these lines are my favorite, how they are not saved until the end but inserted amid all the opportunities and possibilities, the constant pain without which all balance would be lost.

The use of rhyme and meter is a perfect example of knowing the rules so that you can break them, all for the benefit of this particular poem, all to achieve a desired effect. For me, inspirational.

[aschueler]

My favorite poet, one of my favorite poems.

This poem has so many things its hard to point at a few.  I love the vision though ice;  also the sore feet with instep arch "keeps the ache".  Oh haven't I felt that.

Overall he captures the feeling of fever dreams or restless sleep knowing more work lay ahead, this day incomplete  despite maximal effort.

[psychonaut]

Hi, I am kind of new to poetry but enjoyed that very much, could you recommend some other Robert Frost?

[ellajam]

I fell in love with this one just last year.

A Brook In The City by Robert Frost

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.

[Todd]

I'll post a few I like:

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

[Todd]

Leaves Compared with Flowers

A tree's leaves may be ever so good,
So may its bar, so may its wood;
But unless you put the right thing to its root
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bark, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.

Robert Frost

[Todd]

An Old Man’s Winter Night


All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon—such as she was,
So late-arising—to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one man—can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

Robert Frost

[Leanne]

I met Frost in high school. He fell out of a book and wouldn't go away, so I wrote this poem when I was 16 or 17. I've copied it verbatim so you can see how bad my meter and abstraction was

The road was often traveled though the vehicle was new,
flushed from verdant pasture, his bright inspiration flew
from Boston, Massachusetts, to old England’s misty shore,
astride the wild Atlantic with his soaring metaphor

With simple words of wonder and a soul of silver hue,
the stars would flow from out his pen and mingle with the dew
of morning’s blessed spirit riding wildly through the wood,
dismounting at the crossroads where the finest poets stood.

Of fire and ice and winter snows, of crows and crickets quaint,
bright bucolic brushstrokes, mixing magic with the paint;
of life and death and merriment, of fortunes won and lost --
the world is richer having known the coming of the Frost

[aschueler]

Below is one of my favorites I don't see get much audience.

Nice poem there Leanne, for a youngster especially.



Hyla Brook

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.


Robert Frost

[ellajam]

Below is one of my favorites I don't see get much audience.

Nice poem there Leanne, for a youngster especially.



Hyla Brook

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.


Robert Frost

That's pretty luscious, Love the rhyme scheme and although the last line is pretty hokey I love it anyway, for what it is.

[psychonaut]

Wow, my initial perspective on poetry was that rhymed poetry was kind of elementary because inevitably the rhyme will lead the poem. For me free verse allows the author to really capture emotions more vividly. Robert Frost is apparently my first lesson in rhymed poetry. His descriptions are so vivid and no rhyme ever feels forced. Thank you for the samples I think I am going to spend the rest of my day familiarizing myself with Robert Frost

[milo]

I know I have posted these before, but here are 2 great Frost poems:

‘Out, Out—’


By Robert Frost

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 him 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 one dead, turned to their affairs.

I don't know exactly where to settle here as for pointing out brilliant phrases because there are so many (As if to prove saws knew what supper meant), Titled after my favourite Shakespeare soliloquy - like I said, I don't know where to start and where to end without writing 40 pages on this one, and:

The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Robert Frost

Is the silken tent a vagina and the cedar pole a penis?  Why is this exhaled as a single breath of 140 syllables (1 sentence, no periods, ahem, tektak, ahem), what is this bondage? What are these guy wires.  I feel like I could passionately argue and piss off 100 different people just talking about this poem.

[ellajam]

There has been a lot of critique posted recently suggesting that the solution to forced rhyme is to abandon it as opposed to working towards learning to use it well. I came across this thread which has some fine examples of working with rhyme. We have some members here that could be used as examples but this thread has some beauties posted together.

There's also a discussion of Frost and his use of meter here.

[Leanne]

Good call. It kills me when I people say that the way to fix something is to avoid it altogether -- abstinence is not the answer!

Rhyme is nothing more than another tool in the box for a poet. If you use it poorly, it will not reward you, just as if you used your hammer to soften up the wall so the nail goes in further. And meter partners perfectly with rhyme when you use the two together well -- Frost is a good example, but there are literally thousands of others. My personal guru for using meter and rhyme so well you don't even notice them is Philip Larkin.

[Achebe]

Though I like Larkin, I believe that the best rhyming poetry in English comes from an era when spelling was more fluid and if you fell short of a rhyme, you just invented the word or repeated it:

but if in liuing colour and right hue
your self you couet to see pictured
who can do it rightly or more true
than that sweet verse with nectar sprinkled
in which a gracious servant pictured
his Cynthia, his heauen's fairest light?
that with his melting sweetness rauished
and with the wonder of her beams bright
my senses are lulled in slomber of delight...


Or, you could just write in a different language, where you could rely on conjugation to do the trick:

Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,

la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.

[Leanne]

Ah yes, you're right of course -- the best of English came from people who despised their Englishness and went off to foreign countries to try to become king/ not die of venereal diseases/ find someone to shag who wasn't related. Alternatively, let us look to 700-odd years ago, when all poets were beloved of milkmaids and other demonstrative demoiselles, but the language they wrote in can only be called English by virtue of it having been written occasionally in a garret in Cornwall, pining across the centuries for an Arthurian figment.

Alternatively, we could just work with the rich, fluid and exceedingly poetic language that we have right now, and do it properly.

[Achebe]

 let us look to 700-odd years ago, when all poets were beloved of milkmaids and other demonstrative demoiselles, but the language they wrote in can only be called English by virtue of it having been written occasionally in a garret in Cornwall, pining across the centuries for an Arthurian figment.

Can I just stand back and admire what you've written for the sheer wit of it? It's almost like you're English  , or an English teacher...

[ellajam]

Here's a link to the Larkin thread, but it would be great if Leanne or anyone else would post some faves here, or start a Favorite Larkin thread.

[Leanne]

I love them all. Like this one:

Annus Mirabilis by Philip Larkin

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.