Good-By and Keep Cold

 As I continue reading through the collected works of Robert Frost, a bit of Frost for this cold January day.

Good-By and Keep Cold

"This saying good-by on the verge of the dark
And 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 winteriest 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 nurtured, 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 share in an orchard's arboreal plight,
When slowly (and nobody comes with a ight!)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod;
But something has to be left to God."

Yuletide - Christmas Trees

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city
Yet did in country fashion that was there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come agin
To look for something he had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods - the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are the churches and have spires.
I hand't thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
When the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I'd hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while."
"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."

                                                "You could look.
But I don't expect I'm going to let you have them."
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal bough
All round and round.  The latter he nodded "yes" to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer's moderation, "That would do,"
I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

                                                He said, "A thousand."

"A thousand Christmas trees! - at what apiece?"

He felt some need of softening that to me:
"A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars."

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them.  Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hand enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.
I can't help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

Robert Frost, "Christmas Trees (A Christmas Circular Letter)," Mountain Interval, 1916

This has been an interesting year for us with Christmas trees, but it has been a good one.  Our first experience with a live tree has turned out differently than we thought, but has been a beautiful thing.  More handmade decorations and more attention to what can be placed where, but still joyous and festive.  A bit like this entire holiday season - different, but beautiful and joyous.

I hope the same can be said of your season.  What ever else it looks like, may it be beautiful and joyous.

"O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
How lovely are your branches"

My November Guest

I'm currently reading a poem a day, focusing now on the works of Robert Frost.  So, periodically, I'm going to share some of my favorites.  Here, a poem on the melancholy of November and fall.

My November Guest

“My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list;

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.”

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will, 1913