[Magdalen] Poem for a day like this

[Jay Weigel]

It's snowing here, and I looked out the back door and thought, "Whose woods
these are I think I know........"

On Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 3:51 PM Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Seeing this reminded me of JFK’s inauguration, which took place after
> about an 8” snowfall. Frost was set to read his poem “The Gift Outright,”
> for the occasion, and the sun on the snow was so bright it blinded him, and
> I think he ended up reciting it from memory.
>
> > On Jan 29, 2019, at 12:49 PM, Lynn Ronkainen <houstonklr at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> >
>