Quotes from Robert Frost

Our life runs down in sending up the clock. The brook runs down in sending up our life. The sun runs down in sending up the brook. And there is something sending up the sun. It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in, The tribute of the current to the source. It is from this in nature we are from. It is most us.

The rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But now the theory goes That the apple's a rose, And the pear is, and so's The plum, I suppose. The dear only knows What will next prove a rose. You, of course, are a rose But were always a rose.

Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me, And be my love in the rain.

Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64)

For, dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt It will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor. As I sit here, and often times, I wish I could be monarch of a desert land I could devote and dedicate forever To the truths we keep coming back and back to. ––from The Black Cottage

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense.

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight.

I could give all to Time except -- except What I myself have held. But why declare The things forbidden that while the Customs slept I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There, And what I would not part with I have kept.

poets are like baseball pitchers. both have their moments. the intervals are the tough things.

El bosque es hermoso, oscuro y profundo. Pero tengo promesas que cumplir, y millas que recorrer antes de dormir. Y millas que recorrer antes de dormir.

He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, Good fences make good neighbors.

We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.

They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret must be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God.

Yes, and even for the past...that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was. Something I can accept. Mistakes made by the self I had to be or was not able to be.

I only hope that when I am free, as they are free to go in quest, of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life, it may not seem better to me to rest.

For I have promises to keep; and miles to go before I sleep.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

What are we? Young or new? We must be something.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

In A Glass of Cider It seemed I was a mite of sediment That waited for the bottom to ferment So I could catch a bubble in ascent. I rode up on one till the bubble burst, And when that left me to sink back reversed I was no worse off than I was at first. I'd catch another bubble if I waited. The thing was to get now and then elated.