Yes, although my own poetic prefrences are at a remove from Frost, I do find
his ability to project psychological states impressive: here for instance
the 'clomping' to scare the 'outer night', the room creaking like old bones
and so on. His conservative image (and sometimes practice) is a barrier for
many (and an insidious attraction for others) but he's a true heir of the
Wordsworthian narrative of the selfd.
On 1 February 2010 04:03, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> An Old Man's Winter Night
>
> All out of doors looked darkly in at him
> Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
> That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
> What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
> Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
> What kept him from remembering what it was
> That brought him to that creaking room was age.
> He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
> And having scared the cellar under him
> In clomping there, he scared it once again
> In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
> Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
> Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
> But nothing so like beating on a box.
> A light he was to no one but himself
> Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
> A quiet light, and then not even that.
> He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
> So late-arising, to the broken moon
> As better than the sun in any case
> For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
> His icicles along the wall to keep;
> And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
> Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
> And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
> One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
> A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
> It's thus he does it of a winter night.
>
> Robert Frost
>
> [I used to teach this, quixotically if that's the word, to young students -
> before I was old.
> Now I am old I have a new appreciation of it.
> Max in Melbourne (summertime)]
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
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