Poetry Friday: Another Frost-y Day . . .

. . . but spring is in the air.


A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner,,
     That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
     Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
    Small print overspread it,
The news of the day I've forgotten --
     If I ever read it.

                     -- Robert Frost

Laura Purdie Salas is hosting PF today over at her blog, Writing the World for Kids.

Poetry Friday: Canis Major

The great Overdog,
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye,
Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.

I'm a poor underdog,
But tonight I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.

                        -- Robert Frost

Tara is a sixth grade teacher in NJ, and I'm sure she's happy as heck it's Friday. Check out today's PF offerings at her blog A Teaching Life.

I know this poem has made appearances at Poetry Friday shindigs before. Still, it's always good to review! For a cool analysis, check out Kelly Fineman's Canis Major post here.

That's my boy, Cooper. He and I are happy it's Friday, too. Tonight, we'll be doing our share of leaping, dancing, barking, and romping . . .

Poetry Friday: Reluctance

 

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the hills I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

 

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

 

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone astor is gone;

The flowers of the witch hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question"Whither?"

 

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

                -- Robert Frost 

Heidi is hosting Poetry Friday over at My Juicy Little Universe, where she has a fabulous poem by one of my favorites -- Louis Untermeyer. You need some exercise after yesterday's feast, so trot on over.

Before you go, scroll down and read about Sarah Josepha Hale, who -- in a fashion -- brought you yesterday's feast . . .

Photo by Janet Buell

Poetry Friday: Now Close the Windows

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:

     If the trees must, let them silently toss;

No bird is singing now, and if there is,

    Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,

    It will be long ere the earliest bird;

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

     But see all wind-stirred.

                            -- Robert Frost

Jama is hosting Poetry Friday right here, so get over there!

Photo by Janet Buell, 2011

Poetry Friday: There's Rage in that Water

So sorry to be Debbie Downer, but I cannot get the Gulf of Mexico oil spill out of my mind. I fear we've passed a tipping point. I have no other words this Poetry Friday. I'll let Robert Frost speak for all the shattered and yet-to-be shattered people and creatures. Someone had better be prepared for rage . . .

Once by the Pacific 
by Robert Frost

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.  

This week's Poetry Friday is being hosted by New Hampshire's own Amy Graves over at The Art of Irreverence.  Thanks, Amy!

Poetry Friday

"OUT, OUT--"

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 them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove that saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out of 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 into 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.

--Robert Frost

This week's poetry roundup is at The Cazzy Files

Poetry Friday: Robert Frost's Hillside Thaw

The NOAA weather report this morning said it may be 50 degrees outside this afternoon, and my back pasture is still covered with snow and ice -- which leads me to my old Robert Frost volume and this poem:


Robert Frost - A Hillside Thaw

To think to know the country and not know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.

But if I though to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,--
In the confusion of them all aglitter,
And birds that joined in the excited fun
By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,
I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.



It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard
By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.
From the high west she makes a gentle cast
And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,
She has her spell on every single lizard.
I fancied when I looked at six o'clock
The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.
The moon was waiting for her chill effect.
I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock
In every lifelike posture of the swarm,
Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.
Across each other and side by side they lay.
The spell that so could hold them as they were
Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm
To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.
It was the moon's: she held them until day,
One lizard at the end of every ray.
The thought of my attempting such a stay!


Thaw by Yelena Salakhova, 2006
see more wonderful paintings from this artist and others on the Art and Faith blog: http://01varvara.wordpress.com/2008/01/

Moon on snow is free clipart from http://www.freeclipartnow.com/nature/weather/snow/

Poetrt Friday is hosted this week at http://favoritechildrensbooks.blogspot.com/

Poetry Friday--Thanks for the Memories

Last Friday, Muriel asked if teachers have time to let children memorize poems. I'm guessing, probably not. What a shame. I understand that today's students face a slew of curriculum requirements, and today's teachers barely have time to cover those mandated requirements. That doesn't make it any less a shame.

I'm glad that I teach preschool. Reciting simple rhymes and singing songs are expected parts of the curriculum. What many people don't know, is that little children are capable of so much more. My students have happily memorized Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening and Emily Dickinson's A Bird Came Down the Walk. A few years ago, a mother of one of my kindergarten students told me she was moved to tears when she realized that her 5-year old was softly reciting Stopping By Woods to himself as they drove through a light snow. I bet that poem will still be with him when he's an old man.

Mur got me thinking about poems I've been carrying around for decades. Many of them came from Sister Genevieve St. Joseph. Barberries is one. (I tried unsuccessfully to search out the author.) A Bird Came Down the Walk by Emily Dickinson is another. I'd have to say my favorite, however, is a snippet of a much larger work. It's the first twelve lines of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ...

I had to memorize it for an English class my sophomore year in college. I spent hours in the language lab, gigantic headphones gripping my skull, trying to nail the pronunciation. There were probably 50 of us enrolled in the class. Guess who was the only person the professor randomly picked to recite. I achieved the pinnacle of panic when I heard my name called, which was really very silly because I nailed it. I owned Geoffrey Chaucer that day. Still do.

Today's Poetry Friday Round-Up host is Picture Book of the Day.