The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
'Desert Places'
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
buzz saw - blade; no chain
Basically, his sister called him to supper, which apparently distracted the boy enough that he accidentally stuck his hand in the blade.
A buzzsaw is in essence a large version of a table saw, and table saws eat many fingers and thumbs every year. Now imagine that the table saw blade is four feet tall.
I don't really know Frost's other poems either.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
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.
It's also a vignette devoid of human contact, which is common to many of Frost's more introspective poems. The narrator is the main character in an empty or lonely scene, except for a brief interaction with an animal.
Even the choice to say "change of mood" delays clarity until the words "save" and "rued" provide disambiguation. Yet it is also quite short, almost an epigram.
So while the final message is one of positive valence, it is rooted in dark humor, almost a wink emerging from a scowl. I think this is an example where Frost is revisiting some of the ground shared with one of his early influences, Edgar Allen Poe.
> Shook down on me
> The dust of snow
> From a hemlock tree
a.. on.. of.. a
Also, it's all colloquial, "From hemlock tree" isn't how we speak.
Then again, "rued" may have an extra meaning too (rue = ruta graveolens = "herb of grace").
Great poem nonetheless :).
> Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
> I took the one less traveled by,
> And that has made all the difference
Note he doesn't state whether the difference was positive or negative.
We put ourselves into the poetry, and much of his work can indeed be quite dark when read from a certain place.
But if taken (as it usually is) as a metaphor of life's choices, in this case his life choices made him Robert Frost, the famous, incredibly successful poet -- so it's implied that in his case taking road less traveled by was positive.
Now, if the subject of the poem was some anonymous nobody, then maybe the poem would be more ambiguous.
Would've thought most would view it as dark and melancholy and resigned. You get optimism from those lines?
Do you feel the following is optimistic?
'...
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.'
In some sense, I guess it can be viewed as optimistic. In the way 'death cures all' can be viewed as optimistic. Just never thought of it that way. Interesting.
Interesting, I always thought of him as quite optimistic. Maybe because my introduction to him was
it goes well with Monet's The Magpie and hot coffee