Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks: Robert Frost

Showing posts with label Robert Frost. Show all posts

Sunday, May 18, 2025

BW20: A Time to Talk

Time To Talk

Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don't stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven't hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

Sunday, August 20, 2023

BW34: Reluctance by Robert Frost

Happy Sunday! We're coming to the end of our romance month and while meandering through the interweb came across Robert Frost's Reluctance. Frost is a favorite of mine and the poem may be better served for the fall or winter, but I liked the themes of nature and human will and not letting love go.

Then it got me to thinking about romance stories in which one or more of the characters are reluctant to change, to explore, to live, to love which make for some interesting stories. So your mission this week is to look for stories about reluctant heroes or heroines.

Reluctance

Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls 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 aster 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?

This post is sponsored by the letter S for soft, sentimental, sweet, and sexy.

Y'all know what to do. Leave a link or comment below!

Sunday, July 23, 2023

BW30: Choose Something Like a Star by Robert Frost

Choose Something Like a Star

by

Robert Frost

O Star (the fairest one in sight),

We grant your loftiness the right

To some obscurity of cloud –

It will not do to say of night,

Since dark is what brings out your light.

Some mystery becomes the proud.

But to be wholly taciturn

In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn

By heart and when alone repeat.

Say something! And it says "I burn."

But say with what degree of heat.

Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.

Use language we can comprehend.

Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,

But does tell something in the end.

And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,*

Not even stooping from its sphere,

It asks a little of us here.

It asks of us a certain height,

So when at times the mob is swayed

To carry praise or blame too far,

We may choose something like a star

To stay our minds on and be staid.

Our post is brought to you by the letter W which stands for water, wander, welcome, and whimsical.

Y'all know what to do. Leave a link or comment below!

Sunday, December 12, 2021

BW50: A Time to Talk by Robert Frost

Happy Sunday! I love the picture above as well as this simple poem by Robert Frost and the imagery they evoke. Have a wonderful reading week, my lovelies.

A Time to Talk

Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

and slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don't stand still and look around

on all the hills I haven't hoed,

And shout from where I am, "What is it?"

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

for a friendly visit.

For 2022, I'm introducing a new year long reading challenge called A to Z and back again. One word beginning with that letter every week as we work all the way through the alphabet forward, then back to A. The word of the week will be announced with each Sunday's post. There will be numerous ways to play which include reading a book with the word in the title; read alphabetically by author or title; includes the emotion or action or characteristic or job of the character or the story; find a synonym or antonym; form an aptigram or antigram; Create a story or poem and let your thoughts fly.

To give you an example, since we are on week 50, we'd be on the letter c.

The word of the week: Chivalry. Make of it what you will.

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

BW12: A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost

Butterfly Princess by Josephine Wall

Happy Sunday, my lovelies. Today is World Poetry Day so I'll leave you with a poem by one of my favorite poets.

A Prayer In Spring,

Robert Frost

(March 26, 1874)

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard,

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,

To which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends he will,

But which it only needs that we fulfill.

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Count of Monte Cristo Readalong

Chapter 19. The Third Attack

Chapter 20. The Cemetery of the Château d’If

Chapter 21. The Island of Tiboulen

Share your thoughts on the previous events of the story.

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Sunday, August 23, 2020

BW34: Our Singing Strength by Robert Frost

Our Singing Strength

by

Robert Frost

It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes of ragged white
Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed,
And all go back to winter but the road.
Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.
The grass lay flattened under one great tread.
Borne down until the end almost took root,
The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With snowball cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone maintained itself in mud,
Whatever its secret was of greater heat
From inward fires or brush of passing feet.

In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;
Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay,
Some that have come too far north back away,
Really a very few to build and stay.
Now was seen how these liked belated snow.
the field had nowhere left for them to go;
They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;
The trees they'd had enough of with once trying
And setting off their heavy powder load.
They could find nothing open but the road.
So there they let their lives be narrowed in
By thousands the bad weather made akin.
The road became a channel running flocks
Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.
I drove them under foot in bits of flight
That kept the ground, almost disputing right
Of way with me from apathy of wing,
A talking twitter all they had to sing.
A few I must have driven to despair
Made quick asides, but having done in air
A whir among white branches great and small
As in some too much carven marble hall
Where one false wing beat would have brought down all,
Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,
To suffer the same driven nightmare over.
One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them
That back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;
None flew behind me to be left alone.

Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown
The country's singing strength thus brought together,
That though repressed and moody with the weather
Was none the less there ready to be freed
And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.

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Sunday, July 19, 2020

BW29: A Girl's Garden

A Girl's Garden

Robert Frost

A neighbor of mine in the village

Likes to tell how one spring

When she was a girl on the farm, she did

A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father

To give her a garden plot

To plant and tend and reap herself,

And he said, “Why not?”

In casting about for a corner

He thought of an idle bit

Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,

And he said, “Just it.”

And he said, “That ought to make you

An ideal one-girl farm,

And give you a chance to put some strength

On your slim-jim arm.”

It was not enough of a garden,

Her father said, to plough;

So she had to work it all by hand,

But she don’t mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow

Along a stretch of road;

But she always ran away and left

Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.

And then she begged the seed.

She says she thinks she planted one

Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,

Radishes, lettuce, peas,

Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,

And even fruit trees

And yes, she has long mistrusted

That a cider apple tree

In bearing there to-day is hers,

Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany

When all was said and done,

A little bit of everything,

A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village

How village things go,

Just when it seems to come in right,

She says, “I know!

It’s as when I was a farmer——”

Oh, never by way of advice!

And she never sins by telling the tale

To the same person twice.

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Sunday, March 25, 2018

BW13: Two Look at Two by Robert Frost

Deer Creek by Dona Gelsinger

Two Look At Two

Robert Frost

Love and forgetting might have carried them

A little further up the mountain side

With night so near, but not much further up.

They must have halted soon in any case

With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was

With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;

When they were halted by a tumbled wall

With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,

Spending what onward impulse they still had

In One last look the way they must not go,

On up the failing path, where, if a stone

Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;

No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,

Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.

A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them

Across the wall, as near the wall as they.

She saw them in their field, they her in hers.

The difficulty of seeing what stood still,

Like some up-ended boulder split in two,

Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.

She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.

Then, as if they were something that, though strange,

She could not trouble her mind with too long,

She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.

'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'

But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.

A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them

Across the wall as near the wall as they.

This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,

Not the same doe come back into her place.

He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,

As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?

Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.

I doubt if you're as living as you look."

Thus till he had them almost feeling dared

To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking.

Then he too passed unscared along the wall.

Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.

'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood,

A great wave from it going over them,

As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour

Had made them certain earth returned their love.

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For all our Brit Trippers, keep following Ermine Street to York. We end the first leg of our trip in historic wonderful York! Famous for its walls, Roman history, Viking history, and War of the Roses.

Rabbit trails: A Walk Through York Other York Attractions Sculptures at Harrogate

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Sunday, September 17, 2017

BW38: September Equinox

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost

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.

It's time to celebrate the changes of the seasons once again with the September Equinox starting on Friday, the 22nd. The beginning of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere brings on the changing of the leaves and cooler temperatures and Spring in the Southern Hemisphere brings the birth of new wildlife and wildflowers as well as warmer temperatures.

I have the colors of fall on my mind today - gold, green, yellow, red, orange as well as well as purple and blue from the flowers blooming on the morning glory and sagebrush in my yard. So my challenge to you is two fold: Pick a color and 1) Find the color in the title or find a book about the color and/or 2) choose a book based on the color of the cover.

Such as Ted Dekker's Circle Trilogy:

Or Clive Cussler's Inca Gold

Or Red: A History of the Redhead

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Sunday, March 26, 2017

BW13: Happy Birthday Robert Frost

I'm out doing the family thing, my father and all my sisters gathered from near and far to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, while we tramp together, here and there and everywhere. Today is the anniversary of Robert Frost's birthday and since he is one of my favorite poets, I'll leave you with you with one of his poems.

A Prayer in Spring

By

Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfill.

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Sunday, September 13, 2015

BW37: Afield at dusk

Courtesy Bloglovin Best Travel Photos

Waiting

Afield at dusk

Robert Frost

WHAT things for dream there are when spectre-like,

Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,

I enter alone upon the stubble field,

From which the laborers’ voices late have died,

And in the antiphony of afterglow

And rising full moon, sit me down

Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock

And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,

Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;

I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,

Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,

Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;

And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem

Dimly to have made out my secret place,

Only to lose it when he pirouettes,

And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;

On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp

In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,

That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,

After an interval, his instrument,

And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there;

And on the worn book of old-golden song

I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold

And freshen in this air of withering sweetness:

But on the memory of one absent most,

For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

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History of The Medieval World

Chapter 44 - Days of the Empress pp 333 - 340

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Sunday, July 27, 2014

BW31: Come In by Robert Frost

I'm off in the mountains this weekend, so leaving you with something simple this week.

Come In

Robert Frost

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music -- hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went --
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.

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Sunday, March 16, 2014

BW12: Spring Beckons

Spring officially arrives on March 20th and with it comes the feeling of rejuvenation. The feel of the sun, flowers and trees blossoming, birds singing, squirrels chattering and mornings sitting out on my patio enjoying nature. The desire to begin spring cleaning and throw out all the old stuff to make room for the new. Plus the urge to clean up our garden, explore the nursery, go crazy buying too many flats of plants and get busy digging my fingers into the soil. And for some unknown reason, I'm always reminded of Robert Frost and his poem Spring Pools.

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect

The total sky almost without defect,

And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,

Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,

And yet not out by any brook or river,

But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds

To darken nature and be summer woods---

Let them think twice before they use their powers

To blot out and drink up and sweep away

These flowery waters and these watery flowers

From snow that melted only yesterday.

Tell me what you think of when you hear the word Spring. Words that immediately come to mind for me are rebirth, flowers, buds, seeds, sunshine, bees, birds, sing, bright, pink, new. Goodreads came up with an interesting lists related to Spring or Flowers or sunshine.

Decided to get creative and use some of the words from Frost's Poem to find a spring book to read. Not as easy as you think or else I'm just getting really picky. Unlike Winter, in which my stacks were full of wintery reads, I don't seem to have nary a one relating to Spring. Unless I want to count The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder. *grin*

Join me in reading books with spring or spring related words in the title for the season of Spring.

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