Happy Birthday, Robert Frost

Tree At My Window

by Robert Frost

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

The picture above is not the tree at my window, but it is the first tree I've seen in full bloom this spring. I wish you could have been there to see the cloud of bees buzzing hungrily amongst the blossoms. 

There was a crabapple tree outside my window growing up, and I memorized "Tree at My Window" in high school as a tribute to her. I need to re-memorize it. Maybe this could be my new hand-washing poem. I've been using "Loveliest of Trees the Cherry Now" and "Barter." My "playlist" could use some variety. 

My real reason for sharing this poem is that today is Robert Frost's birthday. And amazingly, though I've shared MANY of my Robert Frost favorites over the years (some, multiple times), I've never shared this one. It was the phrase "outside my window" in this Incidental Comics that reminded me of "Tree at My Window." (The comic also made tears spring to my eyes and his comments about the comic validated my NPM theme...more on that later.) Robert Frost's poems are wise and timeless. Here's to the all the best we humans have and will make, and here's to the things upon which we can rely, like Spring and Poetry Friday. Tabatha has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at The Opposite of Indifference.

Nothing Gold -- After Robert Frost

Nothing Gold
after Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
or, in the case of that bush
with its six inches of new growth,
red.

Or, in the case of that forsythia
on the south-facing side of the house,
an unbelievable shade of bright
yellow.

Or, in the case of those new shoots
knifing up from exposed iris bulbs,
a simultaneously fragile but violent
green.

All these early hues
in leaf, in flower
hard to hold as the earth moves
along its path
hour by hour
by day by day
by season by season,

not so much subsiding
as being subsumed
in the golden Eden
of Life.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


The first draft of this poem happened in one of our five-minute quick-writes in writing workshop this week. Another reminder that these small rituals are powerful not just for our student writers, but for our own writing lives.

I have a love-hate relationship with Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost. I landed in the honors program at the University of Denver based on good grades in a sub-standard rural high school. I was over my head in so many ways. There was so much I didn't even know I didn't know. A professor attempted to teach me how to craft a critical essay by humiliating me -- by showing me the work of a classmate who was already clearly on the path to his fame as a writer. Then he asked me if this poem by Robert Frost was hopeful or hopeless. My humiliation had turned to stubborn anger, and I argued that the poem was hopeful. And then I figured out on my own how to be the kind of writer I wanted to be.

It was that experience more than any other that taught me how to teach the writer, not the writing. Every writer can move to the next level, but you can only begin from where they are the moment they show you their own work.


Rebecca has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Sloth Reads, and how perfect is that? Tomorrow is National Goof Off Day, when our spring break begins!

Poetry Friday -- Robert Frost

Unsplash photo by Andy Mai

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(To hear us talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.

by Robert Frost

This is a poem for those times when you can not write an epitaph to save your life. (Ditty Challenge will have to wait.) When the three drafts you wrote for Laura Shovan's February challenge this week  aren't fit for public view. And when all of the good poems you've bookmarked over the years are from the Writer's Almanac, which is gone, and which you miss. Dearly. An accessible poem every morning. A bit of history. Garrison Keillor's voice, if you had time to listen. (Is it wrong to mourn the good done by a person who has been found to have been bad?)

Jone has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Check it Out.

Poetry Friday -- For our Star

One of my brother's colleagues used a colander
to capture this stunning eclipse image.

Choose Something Like a Star
By Robert Frost

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud—
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, ‘I burn.’
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid. (emphasis mine)

Was your Eclipse Day all you'd hoped it would be? Here in Central Ohio, we had, naturally, "some obscurity of cloud." Nonetheless, we experienced the dimming (similar to what comes with summer thunderstorms) and we could see the bite of the moon's shadow using the pairs of glasses we borrowed from a couple of support staff who came out while we were trying to get our pinhole viewers to work. We're looking forward to 2024, when Totality will be just north of us. (That is, if we manage to hold our planet together that long.) On one of the eclipse videos we watched, the narration ended by reminding us that rocks cast shadows on other rocks throughout the cosmos all the time. It's just that on ours, someone is here to notice it.

Jone has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Check It Out.

Poetry Friday -- On Collaboration

via Unsplash

THE TUFT OF FLOWERS
by Robert Frost

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

As all must be,' I said within my heart,
Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.'

This poem goes out to Heidi Mordhorst, with appreciation for her burst of submit-a-proposal-for-NCTE16 energy and the lingering joy of drafting and editing together on a Google Doc until the words (and word count!) (and presenters!) slipped into place like the proverbial hand in glove (with two hours to spare on Wednesday night!). Fingers crossed that our session is accepted!

Keri has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Keri Recommends.

Poetry Friday -- Unharvested

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Gilly Walker

In this last weekend before school starts back up, I will be spending lots of time planning. I think I'm finally to the point in my career where I won't worry about accounting for every single moment of every day. I have learned to appreciate what Robert Frost describes here:

Unharvested
by Robert Frost

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

Catherine has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Reading to the Core.

Poetry Friday -- Gold

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

by Robert Frost

(in the public domain)

Diane has the Poetry Friday roundup at Random Noodling.

Poetry Friday -- Unharvested

Unharvested
by Robert Frost

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

Sometimes it seems like The Writer's Almanac can read my mind. The day after my frustrated PF post last week, when I was feeling like no matter how much I do, I am never doing enough and/or my best, Garrison Keillor sent this Frost poem, reminding me to breathe, to celebrate in leaving a little bit undone.

We accidentally let the one broccoli plant in the community garden that the rabbits didn't eat go unharvested. I think it's a rather beautiful late bloomer. And that cold early morning bee certainly isn't complaining about our mistake!

Laura has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Writing the World for Kids.

Poetry Friday: Pop Quiz

(apologies to Robert Frost)

Nothing Gold Can Stay

1. Nature's first green is what color?
A. Blue
B. Violet
C. Gold
D. Green

2. This hue is her hardest to what?
A. Fold
B. Hold
C. Cold
D. Mold

3. Her early leaf's a what?
A. Shower
B. Bower
C. Glower
D. Flower

4. For how long?
A. An hour
B. A minute
C. A day
D. A season

5. Because of the evidence in the poem that "leaf subsides to leaf./ So Eden sank to grief,/ so dawn goes down to day./ Nothing gold can stay." would you say that this poem is
A. Optimistic
B. Pessimistic



(Answers: c, b, d, a...and the jury's out on number 5. I'll poll the audience on that one. Let me know in the comments whether you see this poem as an optimistic one or a pessimistic one. There's a story behind this question that I'll share later this weekend.)