Today, American poet, Robert Frost, would have been 144 years old. To celebrate his birthday, below, are some words of wit and wisdom from this national treasure.
And the work is play for mortal stakes
Is the deed ever truly done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
The Fear of God
If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere,
From being No one up to being Someone,
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself
You owe it to an arbitrary god
Whose mercy to you rather than to others
Won’t bear to critical examination.
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license
To wear the uniform of who you are,
You should be tempted to make up for it
In a subordinating look or toe,
Beware of coming too much to the surface
And using for apparel that was meant
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.
A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
The best way out is always through.
My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.
All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Fire & Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
And, because I admire the last short poem, quoted above, for its characteristic brevity and profundity, here is my reading of Fire & Ice by Robert Frost
(Image of Frost Creative Commons)