OK, OK. I know these days, when pics of Paris Hilton's skirt accidentally riding up are considered high entertainment, poetry isn't exactly hot stuff, and dottering old bards like Robert Frost especially.
But this morning, as I was considering the copper-colored oak leaves still clinging to their branches in my front yard, I was reminded of a favorite Frost poem. I used to live not far from his cabin in the Vermont woods, and his work has a special place on my shelf. So here is one for fall.
Reluctance
By Robert Frost
Out through the fields and 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 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 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?
