Nothing Gold Can Stay

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.

         --Robert Frost

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

We woke up to a covering of snow this morning.  As always, it is beautiful!  But, after the warm weather we had last week and the discovery of daffodils pushing through the earth, the snow seems out of place this mid-March morning!  So I was delighted to discover Sarah's blog post (in Dorset, England) and be regaled with photos of daffodils and a poem by William Wordsworth.  Sarah asked her readers if we had a favorite childhood poem.  I'd have to say mine would be Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

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.

Susan Jeffers has illustrated a beautiful 
children's book of this poem....

If you, too, need a dose of daffodils, be sure to visit Sarah's post A Host of Golden Daffodils.

New England Adventure-Day 5

♫Lovers' Waltz♫

Day 5 – Wednesday, October 11, 2006

We had a delicious pancake breakfast with three of the other guests who’d flown up from Texas and rented a car—a couple traveling with his elderly mother just to see the changing leaves.  They’d come from northern Vermont the day before and gave us news we did not care to hear—the leaves were mostly off the trees.  Our host answered our questions about the house.  It seems Emily was not at all happy when it was built because it blocked her view of the mountains.  But she soon made friends with the children of the family, baking them cookies and playing with them.  However, they were all soon to die of typhoid fever and Emily began to refer to the house as the house of sorrows.  Here is one of the poems she wrote about the house we stayed in:

There's Been A Death In The Opposite House

by Emily Dickinson

There's been a death in the opposite house


As lately as to-day.


I know it by the numb look


Such houses have alway.



The neighbors rustle in and out,


The doctor drives away.


A window opens like a pod,


Abrupt, mechanically;



Somebody flings a mattress out,--


The children hurry by;


They wonder if It died on that,--


I used to when a boy.



The minister goes stiffly in


As if the house were his,


And he owned all the mourners now,


And little boys besides;



And then the milliner, and the man


Of the appalling trade,


To take the measure of the house.


There'll be that dark parade





Of tassels and of coaches soon;


It's easy as a sign,--


The intuition of the news


In just a country town.