Sunday, November 16, 2008

A lacey waterfall in Madison Gulf, the Peabody River catchment, June 2008

These are two favorite Robert Frost poem about water as a lovely, intricate phenomenon and are addressed to water as we experience it the spring in New Hampshire. By the way Hyla is another name for spring peepers, those tiny creatures with the loud, raspy song heard on spring nights.
The phrase "taken otherwhere in song" was a swipe at Tennyson for his perpetual references to "bubbling brooks" which raised the hackles on Frost's neck.

Hyla Brook

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

Robert Frost


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.

Robert Frost

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