Sunday, April 23, 2006

Poem of the day

For Once, Then, Something

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Robert Frost
Bookmark and Share

4 Comments:

Blogger Rory Shock said...

lovely

2:13:00 PM  
Blogger Kathy said...

I've always like Frost since I was child and received "A Child's Garden of Verse" or something along those lines.

This is a lovely poem, and it reminds me of the adage about not seeing the forest through the trees. Was that Frost too?

5:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love Frost. I don't know about that adage particularly Kathy. I have a terrible memory for that sort of thing. He does a lot of forest poems though.

6:01:00 PM  
Blogger Kathy said...

Ha-ha. I have a bad memory too. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized the book I mentioned above was written by Robert Louis Stevenson, not Frost. Groan...I hate getting old.

1:32:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home