Poetry Wednesday 10/14/09: October by Robert Frost

October
By Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if the were all,
Whose elaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost–
For the grapes’ sake along the all.

Hello, and welcome back to Poetry Wednesday 10/14/09. You can sign in today and take the tour thru Thursday, so take your time.

I’ll be your hostess again this week. My sister, Sans Souci, has been very busy helping our mom get adjusted to her new assisted living residence, but she will check in.

Before we get started, please make sure that your post has a link to get back to this page to make it easier to take the tour:

1) Copy and paste the following link that I have provided for you from this page to somewhere on your poetry post.

Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita’s page

2) Leave the link of your poetry post in the comments section below. This is the link guests will click on to read your poem.

A New England October can have days that seem like winter. In the poem called, “October”, Frost wants to put off those wintry days and keep the golden fullness of autumn. He speaks directly to October, in a kind of prayer.

Flinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America’s most popular 20th-century poets.

Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry.

His first two books of verse, A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes.

In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences — along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice — helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost’s poems include “Mending Wall” (“Good fences make good neighbors”), “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (“Whose woods these are I think I know”), and perhaps his most famous work, “The Road Not Taken” (“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– / I took the one less traveled by”).

Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as “Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.

Frost recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school… Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, “I’d just as soon play tennis with the net down.”

In late autumn, you can sometimes walk through a field and see things that remind you of summer. Here, in the poem called, “A Late Walk”, Frost finds one last flower, and brings it back as a reminder.

A Late Walk
by Robert Frost

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.

Would anyone like to go for a walk?

The tour starts here

colors dance…

15 CommentsChronological Reverse Threaded

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lauritasita wrote on Oct 12, ’09

Here’s a post for this week: http://lauritasita.multiply.com/journal/item/1507/Poetry_Wednesday_101409_The_Road_Not_Taken

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starfishred wrote on Oct 12, ’09

Here is mine love the page
http://starfishred.multiply.com/journal/item/1898/POETRY_WEDNESDAY-CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE

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gileson wrote on Oct 12, ’09

Since our hostess has set the theme this week with some Frost, I thought I would follow up with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
FROST AT MIDNIGHT

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lauritasita wrote on Oct 12, ’09

It seems that Frost is a favorite of many people.

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gileson wrote on Oct 12, ’09

Laurita got me all inspired with fall colors so I decided to write a poem called simply
Autumn

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sassyangelac wrote on Oct 13, ’09

http://sassyangelac.multiply.com/journal/item/610/Poetry_Wednesday–Rain_On_Your_Wedding_Day

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jadedruid wrote on Oct 13, ’09

I have been so busy, but I miss reading everyones poems. Here’s one I wrote last week. I hope everyone enjoys it and I look forward to getting to visit everyone else this week.
http://jadedruid.multiply.com/journal/item/945/Painting_on_the_Water

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lauritasita wrote on Oct 13, ’09

jadedruid said

I have been so busy, but I miss reading everyones poems. Here’s one I wrote last week. I hope everyone enjoys it and I look forward to getting to visit everyone else this week.