Observations placeholder

Robert Frost – from The Poetry of Robert Frost

 And none are taken but who will,
Having first heard the  life read out
That opens earthwards, good and ill
Beyond the shadow of a doubt
And very beautifully God limns
And tenderly, life's little dream
But naught extenuates or dims
Setting the thing that is supreme

Nor is there wanting in the press
Some spirit to stand simply forth
Heroic in its nakedness
Against the uttermost of earth
The tale of earth's unhonoured things
Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun,
And the mind whirls and the heart sings
And a shout greets the daring one.

-----------------------------------------------------

 But always God speaks at the end
'One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend
The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
Admits no memory of choice
Or the woe were not earthly woe
To which you give the assenting voice'

And so the choice must be again
But the last choice is still the same
And the awe passes wonder then
And a hush falls for all acclaim
And God has taken a flower of gold
And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
Spirit to matter till death come

'Tis of the  essence of life here
Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear
That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose
Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close
Bearing it crushed and mystified