Frost

One thing I remember from my youth in New Brunswick was how in the early fall there'd be an overnight front and in the morning I'd wake up and see a grey sheet over the lawn.  But after a while it would thaw and the lawn would be green again.  That's one thing I miss from New Brunswick.

One of my favourite poets is Robert Frost.  He'd been a New England farmer and his poems often start with a realistic detail of country life, then develop it into a deep metaphysical theme.

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.

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" involves "Paradise lost," a great theme in American culture.  I think that what I liked about that frost on the lawn was precisely that it was gone so soon!

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

What I like about "Dust of Snow" is that it starts with a silly moment and draws back to reveal that it's about someone having a bad day.  Like a movie shot that starts with a closeup than draws out to reveal a whole panorama!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

When I was young, I thought that "The Road Not Taken" was about the importance of doing things differently instead of conforming.  Now that I'm older, I realize that it's about the regret we inevitably feel when we look back at our choices and speculate on what a different choice would have meant.