Day 68: Frosty Evening

It was a quiet day, and aside from Stan's brother, I don't think anyone really wants to read about the truck's oil change. :-)  One of New Hampshire's favorite sons is Robert Frost, who lived in the state off and on over many years of his life. Some of his best-loved poems were written at his farm in Franconia Notch, where we played yesterday. Many of the scenes he described now seem more real in our mind's eye.

Frost's words will make much better reading than anything we have to share tonight. Here are a couple of our favorites; by chance, they're some of his NH work. Perhaps you'll be inspired to dig out your old anthologies and look up a few more.


Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost, 1923

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.



Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost, 1923

Whose woods are these I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.