Frost-y Morning

poetry

I woke up to Nanda’s request the I explore a poet on our blog here. Oh— if you insist! ( meaning: I thought you’d never ask! Caveat: this is all purely personal, my degrees are in Anthropology and law; I ain’t no English major.)

“Blood has been harder to dam back than water./ Just when we think we have it impounded safe/Behind new barrier walls(and let it chafe!)/It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter./ We choose to say it is let loose by the devil,/But power of blood itself releases blood./It goes by might of being such a flood/Held high at so unnatural a level./ It will have outlet, brave and not so brave:/ Weapons of war and implements of peace/Are but the points at which it finds release./ And now it is once more the tidal wave/Which when it has swept by leaves summits stained./ Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.”

The Flood, Robert Frost

I love Frost. He is to me the quintessential American poet. the Bard of Blueberries. The Shakespeare of snow!

Let me just point out a few of the things this poem evokes for me. Blood “held high at so unnatural a level”. In addition to the image of a dam, a reservoir, I think of a military salute: in the soldiers’ heads, that’s where blood is held, so high.

“Implements of peace”..I see gleaming surgical instruments. Yes their purpose is benign, but still ,they are sharp, they are designed for bloodletting, and they will inflict pain, whatever else they achieve.

“Summits stained”. I see snow- covered peaks “incarnadined” as Shakespeare put it in Macbeth. Snow really shows the blood!
And finally the two- sentence last line, perfect iambic pentameter. The blunt percussion on the operative words —words of one syllable, the great “iron of English”: Blood. Out. Be. Falling, ringing, like hammer blows on an anvil.
I hope this is a poem which, especially in light of current events, will resonate both with our Othello and his Desdemonas, meaning: with the soldier, and those who marvel at his tales.

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Published by Hypatia

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58 thoughts on “Frost-y Morning”

  1. …DAMN (or dam) auto-correct! In the first line it should be “dam back”. But maybe Frost intended the homonym . Everybody does curse war, but “damning” it dies not keep it from breaking out….

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  2. Wow! Both timely – and timeless – totes awesome! Thank you! Would love to hear more of blueberries and snow. (I was aware of fences, walls, and neighbors before.) He was Poet Laureate for good reason.

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  3. For you, Nanda (from memory):

    “Grief may think it was grief
    And care may think it was care-
    They were welcome to their belief,
    That over-important pair!

    But whenever the roof turned white
    The head in the bed below
    Was less the color of night
    And more the color of snow.

    Grief may think it was grief
    And care may think it was care.
    But time alone was the thief
    Of his raven color of hair.”

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    1. I realize “The Road Not Taken” is the most commercial and unfortunately the least respected of his poems, but it spoke to me as a young person going out into the real world for the first time. Even as a seasoned adult, his message is still relevant to me and I have a framed copy in my office.

      Call me unsophisticated, unoriginal or what you will, but it still has meaning to me and I’m sticking to it!

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      1. No, that’s a GREAT poem! I read somewhere that it’s America’s favorite poem. Have you ever read “The Gift Outright”? A wonderful poem about being American.

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    2. Thank you, Hypatia! Lovely and truthful; particularly apropos – in view of Mom Panjandrum’s anniversary of leave-taking tomorrow (1/11/15). Will try to put something up tomorrow….

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  4. This is lovely though I am way out of my depth. On the other hand, I think the last sentence in your OP must somehow refer to me, and I love it when you guys talk about my favorite subject. More so even when you are saying nice things.

    Carry on, your ladyship/s!

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    1. ST, Do you find this poem hard to understand? It seems fairly simple to me, about the prevalence and inevitability of bloodshed in human history, how we always think we’ve put an end to it but we never do. Some new casus belli will surface, something we couldn’t have imagined: like, we thought we had vanquished the Saracens back in 1685! Whoda thunk we’d be beating back another threat from that quarter in 2020?
      And yes, I wrote before, you are like Othello, enchanting us with your stories of combat and adventure. That’s how he won Desdemona.

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      1. No ma’am, I think I can understand the poem. It is your take on it (which I thoroughly enjoyed) that assures me that I am out of my league. That is okay by me. No one can be an expert on all things.

        By my first comment, I was trying to say without saying it directly that I wish I could but don’t believe there is much I can add to this conversation.

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  5. I think Othello also knew that Desdemona was out of his league.

    And we have another age old phenomenon. The lady falls in love with her knight; but because he knows himself, he knows that she is too good for him. That circle is hard to square.

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      1. If I understand your question correctly, it means there are some ladies that I admire but feel they are too gentle to ever truly understand my nature. They are inherently kind and nurturing, that is to say they possess a most beautiful spirit. In their presence I sense their souls are somehow better – more enlightened than is mine. Am I making any sense at all?

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      3. ST, The good breakup line is “You’re way too good for me! “. Altho come to think of it, I guess that’s just a fancier version of “Its not you, it’s me”, But no, that isn’t as consoling. Nanda gets it! Actually maybe that isn’t a good breakup line, the tender lady will just be moved to try to bolster the guy’s low self -esteem, real or feigned. I guess there ARE no good break-up lines…

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    2. “….he knows that she is too good for him….”

      ST, he *thinks* he knows she’s too good for him. He needs to see himself through her eyes. The dents ‘n’ scratches on his armor make him *more* worthy, not less. It means he’ll be willing to protect/defend her. Just hafta say…. -smile-

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  6. “I love Frost. He is to me the quintessential American poet. the Bard of Blueberries. The Shakespeare of snow!”

    Thanks for choosing him. So many poets can be annoyingly obtuse, but he has always moved me more than any other in any time. I even managed to get myself into a 15 “members only” seminar in college taught by Stephen Spender and at the risk of sounding like a Philistine, was slightly bored.

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  7. “….Stephen Spender….”

    Forgive me, Liz, I wasn’t an English major for very long – Emerson ticked me off: Who’s Stephen Spender, when he’s at home? -Grin-

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    1. Spender was an English poet, novelist and essayist who was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965.

      He died in 1995 but occasionally did semesters at American universities. My advisor got me into Spender’s “exclusive” seminar at Vanderbilt despite my protests. At that point, it was all I could do to keep up with my Joyce studies (Ulysses and that god awful Finnegan’s Wake) but this wonderful professor forced me to push myself and take the last remaining slot. So I did.

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  8. Frost wrote additional lines to read at Kennedy’s inauguration, but it was too windy, he couldn’t hold the paper still, so he recited the original parts of the poem “The Gift Outright”. But here are the lines he couldn’t read aloud. I thought of them in 2016:
    “Come fresh from an election like the last,/The greatest vote a people ever cast!/ So close, yet sure to be abided by,/It is no wonder that our mood is high!”

    I thought of them with longing. Because we’ve lost the “so close but sure to be abided by” part. Instead of , “well, okay, we didn’t vote for JFK, but now he’s president, give him a chance and we’ll vote again in four years“ we got #notmypresident and “Resist!” We got the pink pussyhats. . If elections no longer settle things, at least temporarily, we’ve lost the sine qua non of democracy.

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  9. The Road Not Taken
    BY ROBERT FROST

    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.

    This is my favorite poem and describes everything that I have ever valued.

    Thank you to Hyp for sharing an equally supportive view of this poem.

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  10. Walt. Whitman did something similar for me, Liz, at about the same time. Not the adolescent/young adult poems everybody cites, though. His Civil War poems led me toward finding value in the adversity I’d undergone – and a glimmer of the strength that comes from camaraderie. I don’t have a copy of “Leaves of Grass” at hand anymore, but I’ll see if I can find something that struck a chord with me.

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  11. Well, it’s been fun as always, but I’d better call it a day, and get some sleep before I start the next one. Enjoy your weekend, ST! G’night to everyone Stateside. Peace be in and with us all! Volveré más tarde. Hasta entonces!

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  12. In my university’s Latin class, we translated excerpts from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love). Maybe that’s when it all first started to go so wrong for me?

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      1. I think they convinced us that it was similar to Proverbs but super boring. So no one, myself included ever thought to read it. I finally ‘discovered’ it about the same time as I did Ovid. Double whammy! No wonder I suddenly began to take such a serious interest in the fair sex.

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  13. Another touch of Frost to start, or end, your day today:

    “Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction, ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.“

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      1. It’s definitely pithy! You probably also know “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”. I think the theme is the same as the Road one: the poet is tempted but he won’t be seduced away from his life’s purpose. Many of the lines from “Stopping” can, in isolation, seem kinda Hallmark-y or cute, as you say. Somehow though, when you finish the poem, it seems profound.

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  14. “Comfort me with apples, stay me with flagons, for I am sick of love!”

    At the risk of sounding like an instigator, I actually think someone may be feeling a wee bit randy.

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    2. Been reading that in the Liturgy of the Hours in between Christmas and Epiphany. Oh. Goshness. Me. (Anyone who thinks people of faith aren’t clued in hasn’t read this poem.)

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  15. And Randy continues: Song of Songs 2:6-8 KJV

    6 His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me. 7 I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. 8 The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

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    1. H’mmm…”black, but comely”…makes me think of our discussion about the sun protection gear …
      But about King Solomon. Weird. He starts out being yet he wisest man in the world. But by the end of his reign he has a huge harem full of women who worship other gods and he himself sacrifices some of his children to Moloch!
      I think the Muzzies believe he didn’t die in office, he took the beggar’s bowl when he got old and wandered around the known world, an itinerant sage.
      ST, if you ever read novels, you might like Geraldine Brooks’ “The Secret Chord”. It’s about King David, who is really the only Biblical character we know about from boyhood till death. But toward the end it gets into the selection and grooming of Solomon (Schlomo) for King, and the bloody work he had to do to clean house after David’s administration.

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  16. I like the way you think and will pick up this book for sure. Maybe even do a book report on it here someday.

    BTW, I loved what you recently queried about on L2 concerning the Trinity. Now you have me wondering too why it took you, Hypatia, a mere girl to point out that Trichotomy to us manly men!

    You go girl!

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    1. “BTW, I loved what you recently queried about on L2 concerning the Trinity.”

      Any chance of bringing this wisdom “home”, Hyp? I’d love to see it!

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      1. Hello? She has done it. See the last comment on this thread. I think you should take the first crack at it. I fear I am, once again, out of my depth; but, I like what Hypatia is putting down even if i am not picking it up too well.

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  17. Nanda, It was on a thread purporting to “prove” that the doctrine of the Trinity was part of Christianity from day one, or at least from St.Paul, who is the guy writing closest in time to Jesus’ life. I have had long exchanges with this gent before. He’s very devout and I get that. There’s really no point in arguing about such things in general, is there? But he said a certain passage conclusively disproved the spurious theory that Christian beliefs (specifically the Trinity, as it appeared) have a “pagan origin” “Pagan” confers a lotta ground. It just struck me that I’ve never studied a religion or folklore corpus which contained anything comparable to the Trinity. I mean, gods can have children, check. Gods can Impregnate human females, check. Gods can appear on earth in any form they wanna counterfeit, check. But a god who is 3 in one? (And of course many have bled and died over disputes concerning the exact composition of the Godhead, the relation between the three Persons.)
    Christianity was a sect of a monotheistic religion, Judaism. “The Lord thy God, the Lord is ONE”. Okay, now they have a second divinity, Jesus . Instead of stopping at two,(or dealing with Jesus’ divinity by some doctrine like he was an avatar, possibly even a non-corporeal projection à la Gnosticism) they ( meaning the “church fathers”, the orthodoxy) add a third: the Spirit. But it’s not polytheism, because the three are all one Person! ( Much later, to the Muzzies, f’rinstance, the doctrine is the ultimate heresy because it threatens the One-ness of Allah,As did the now reviled “Satanic verses”.)
    Why, is what I wondered.?why risk this confusion with Polytheism? No,I’M not saying Trinitarianism is polytheism , but you hafta admit it looks like it at first glance!
    I also find myself irritated that people of this gent’s persuasion are so threatened by the obvious similarities between Christianity and older religions. Color me a Neo-Platonist, I reckon; I don’t know whether I believe it all or not, but i dont see why you can’t be a devout Christian , and still recognizes the existence of these similarities; Neo-Platonists dealt with ‘em by saying they were pale shadows, foreshadowing, of the Truth to be revealed by Christ. Whatevs…. what do you think, Nanda et al.?

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  18. Good Morning! Right with you, Hyp…Similarities? Foreshadowings? Sure…But the very idea of a non-violent, asexual creation by word alone: “And God said….And it was so.” is the first instance of “Behold, I am doing a new thing”. The Trinity is a mystery, and a relationship: The Father’s spoken words bring forth all of creation; His desire for restoration of right relationship with those who are in His own image and likeness leads to His “speaking to us in a Son”, says St. Paul. The Love that *is* God, says St. John, sustains/sanctifies/empowers us in the Spirit, on our way Home to the Father’s house. The similarities/foreshadowings deal with helping our finite minds wrestle with the *mechanics* of a Mystery born of Love…That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it….

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    1. So Nanda you agree with me about the Ne0-Platonism. And you are devout I know, so you probably believe, as does the Rodent Baptist, that we have the trinity doctrine because it is TRUE. Period.
      But do you see what else I’m getting at? The Romans had a pantheon of gods, as did the other religions around the Fertile Crescent. Judaism was unique in being a one-god faith. The Christians were a sect of Judaism , in fact at first they thought you’d hafta convert and become a good Jew like Jesus, before you could BE a Christian.,. (Yeah i know that was the Peter-Paul rift, resolved by Peter’s dream of the non-kosher feast) What I’m getting at is , why, in the 4th cent, when the old Roman gods were still around, would the church fathers not have avoided even the appearance of polytheism? (I mean, might there be contemporary historical influences on the doctrine, leaving aside for the moment the debate about whether it was purely a divine revelation?)
      The Rodent Baptist ( not to insult him, I kinda like him: he is dogmatic but hey I’m from that same kennel!) ended up saying the Trinity doctrine is SO illogical,and inexplicable that it HAS to be true! When you are fabricating a theory, you make sure it makes sense. It doesn’t, so that means the church fathers didn’t make it up. I guffawed, insofar as we can do so in print. He fell silent.
      (And:Thanks ST for reading this and pointing Nanda to my response..I didn’t know whether, just, it wasn’t of any interest, or whether it hadn’t been read,)

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      1. Hyp, my devotedness does not prevent me from, or censure me for, exploring and marveling over what my favorite psychologist,, William James, so aptly called “The Varieties of Religious Experience”. Unlike your interlocutor on L2, because I speak “chaplainese”, I can listen to another’s religious experience without my own being threatened….If someone – personally – asks about my reasons for hope, they’ll be shared. Hopefully, my lived example will show -dimly, of course, that the Trinity is active in my life – when I allow it to be. Head knowledge is useful, if you’re asked informational questions or feel that you’re under siege, needing to mount a defense continually….Exhausting! Heart knowledge, as we travel together toward Home, is more useful; the dogma/doctrine of the Trinity is proven true for me daily – as I live and breathe. Period. -smile-

        Thanks, again, for this!

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    2. I response to yours beginning “Hyp, my devotion..” yes I know these things about you. And admire them.

      But do you have any thoughts on why the orthodoxy went Trinitarian?i mean were there any political,or geo,political,reasons why, that you can think of? There were many large groups of Christians—Arians, Albigensians, etc. that weren’t Trinitarian. And still are today. That is what I was wondering about. It is a very complicated doctrine and, to the laity, it skates close to,polytheism. That’s all. (I’m not arguing with it, as I think,you understand.)

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      1. Of course, Hyp, absolutely….There are clues within Jewish thought, and Jesus’ own words; but I can’t come up with any “secular antecedent”…. When Jesus says: “The Father and I are one.” That’s a start – when He tells the apostles to “Wait [here] until you’re clothed with power from on high”; the Spirit partaking in creation in Genesis and Proverbs; resting on Jesus after the Baptism – I think this was a matter of revelation – without the kinds of ‘comprehensible’ workarounds that Arius, etc. were proposing. “Behold, I am doing a new thing.” Remember St. Nick’s fisticuffs with Arius?

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  19. I shall return at a more decent hour to comment on topic but for the moment, Hypatia at some point we might want to try once again to ‘upgrade’ your membership here because I suspect we all are getting notifications for some but not all your comments. On the other hand, leaving well enough alone is probably the best course of action for a while, maybe longer.

    Wombat-Honey remains a fly in the ointment! LOL

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      1. Thanks for making me laugh out loud. I had to restrain myself from typing the second thing that came to mind due to the fact it would have been in clear violation of our unwritten financially friendly guidelines.

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