I don’t read a lot of Robert Frost but The Writer’s Almanac featured this poem over the weekend and I thought it was just right. I’ve been hiking in Millcreek Canyon pretty regularly since June and, climbing “the hills of view” on Saturday, I looked around and it was fall. Sigh.
Reluctance
by Robert Frost
Out through the fields and the 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 the 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 a 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?
I may end up memorizing this one instead of the Neruda for September/October–I think the rhythm would be nice to work on while hiking and I’m still not feeling my first choice. Also, I don’t have any rhyming poems in my list, let alone any that allow me to say “and lo.”