[Magdalen] Poem for a day like this

[Marion Thompson]

A good poem.  An hour or two ago similar thoughts came to mind, though not so poetically, as I piled shovelled welcome fresh snow onto the beds where the young roses are snoozing.  Shortly ago in this yo-yo season a hearty one was showing new growth buds on its long bright green stem.  No!  You need to sleep and be safe beneath a deep snow comforter.  Yes, indeed,  “Dread fifty above more than fifty below.”

Marion, a pilgrim

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Lynn Ronkainen
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2019 12:49 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: [Magdalen] Poem for a day like this

Poem for a Cold Winter Day
by Robert Frost 

This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call
I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
"How often already you've had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below."
I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an ax—
Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard's arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.
A Note from the Editor
Robert Frost died on this day in 1963, at the age of 88.