Tag: Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken? I was Foolishly Duped and Took The Wrong Turn!

November 9, 2024

Reading recently about Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Road Not Taken”, I discovered why he wrote it. (Here is a wonderful description of Frost’s “joke” and an analysis of the poem itself).

I found the story amusing, because I have also spent half a century, like his poet friend, wondering which way to take. Now, at the sunset years of my life, I have come to yet another crossroad, but this time I have decided to take the liberty of amending Frost’s last stanza:

HIS OPUS:

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.

MY REFRAME:

I am now telling this with a sigh

As it has been ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I was foolishly duped and took the wrong turn,

And stumbled and fell and saw hell,

But now I found the one less traveled by,

And that has made and will make all the difference.

The Love of Bare November Days with Its Withered Trees

November 3, 2024

An amazing photographer, Kim Allen Goff, posted this beautiful photo on social media and commented,

“I’ve loved to peer into windows since I was a child and the older the house the better! The reflections on these windowpanes spoke the language of November.”

Immediately, her comment and photo reminded me of this Robert Frost poem, below. I read somewhere that, in this particular poem, “Sorrow finds beauty in its desolation”.

It is true.

Sorrow does bring forth reflection, and from that reflection springs clarity of understanding, and from that clarity -eventually- those turbulent waters reach their destination and may turn into a beautiful and calm and crystalline cove or lake. So there. I have to thank Kim for making me be happy about my birthday month! There is beauty in those reflections of the bare, the withered tree…

MY NOVEMBER GUEST
by Robert Frost

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.