In my younger years, I had a brief love affair with the poet Robert Frost. Born in 1874, died in 1963, he’s buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery in Vermont where I used to go often as a kid. I’m not sure if that somehow made me feel closer to him, having wandered the same roads, pondered the same green hills and eaten the same delicious ice cream from Vermont dairy cows... maybe.
It started with “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” My mom had memorized it as a kid and I decided I absolutely had to do the same—as if it were a literary rite of passage that would make me as smart as her. And so I did. And as those things go, once committed to memory as a kid, it never goes away. I can recite it from memory right here and now, and so I will.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Something in me, even as an 8- or 9-year-old felt the deep pull of the desolate, bleak and silent woods. I longed to be among them, bumping down the snowy lanes, my horse to keep me company, my medical bag beside me, the clock hands spinning slowly as they wait my arrival, one after another, death swirling about the doors and windows. And I just loved how other than the doctor, the horse was a central character in the story—one that could communicate clearly with just the bells on his harness, questioning his master as to what they were doing out on the darkest evening of winter. But the doc is on a mission. A mission that cares not if the moon is bright or the snow is deep or the air frigid. He took an oath and it’s so much a part of who he is that he has no choice but to travel the miles. You have to respect that.
I can’t seem to find the origin of this quote, but in describing the poem, someone says it conveys “the insistent whisper of death at the heart of life.” Perhaps that’s why I find it so fascinating. It’s like blessed humor in the midst of grief, but it’s a whisper of death at the heart of life. It’s beautiful, contradictory, confusing and a bit mysterious. It’s the stuff of life… when we put down our phones and turn off Netflix.
Sometime during middle school, I read the 1967 novel The Outsiders, and watched the 1983 movie adaptation. There’s a scene where two best friends, Johnny Cade (think adorable Ralph Macchio) and Ponyboy Curtis (age 14), are standing under an amazing sunrise, in awe of the clouds and colors and the majesty of it all. As they’re standing there with time paused for just a moment, Ponyboy recites the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost. There is something so pure, so innocent, fleeting and so gut-wrenchingly sad that this poem elicits in me. There’s inherent loss in beauty … and in the case of Ponyboy and Johnny, innocence. Read it yourself.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
By 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.
Later in the movie (because sadly, that’s what I remember best), as Johnny lays dying, he recalls the beauty of the poem and their friendship and urges Ponyboy with this wish, “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.” …as if there were a way he could freeze time so that Ponyboy could retain his golden goodness and innocence. All good things must come to an end. The realities of life creep in and they’re harsh. And so we have to work to remember Eden—despite the inevitable grief. We have to look to the flowers while they’re in bloom, look to the sun and the moon and the stars and do the work of remembering the gold. I can’t say I’m particularly good at this, but I know that whenever I’m outside around dusk, and I’m watching the sinking sun, the white-wash of the sky and the growing darkness, a deep sadness washes over me. The times I’m not overwhelmed by the heaviness of the grief, I relish its weight. And this poem comes to mind. Every time. As the day dies and the night is born.
And so my friends, to quote the Frost you all know well, when two roads diverge in a yellow wood, take the one less traveled by. As Frost calls to mind in “The Road Not Taken,” it makes all the difference.
