Promises To Keep

Do you know Robert Frost’s poem “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.”

 Robert Frost American Poet 1874 – 196

I first discovered Frost many years ago when we were discussing/dissecting The Road Not Taken in an English lesson at school so many, many years ago and then years later I rediscovered him at University.  Everybody knows the first two lines of that poem – “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both….” but there are many others to be discovered and enjoyed

I was thinking today about the blogs that I had written and ended with the words To be continued.. that haven’t been continued and I thought that I had promises to keep.  Then this poem sprung to mind.  I couldn’t remember all the words but our friends at Wikipedia supplied the second and third verses.

So thank you Wikipedia.  I shall now make good on those promises to complete the various unfinished stories.  So as they say, Watch This Space.

Dreamstime.com Free images

And now
As the water cascades and tumbles
over the rocks in it’s rush
down to join the river
so my thoughts tumble around my brain
looking for an outlet
or a safe place to stop.
Judith Baxter, blogger, writer and friend
1938 –

 

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13 responses to “Promises To Keep

  1. Looking forward to you continuing … and continuing … and continuing … 😀

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  2. One of my favorite of Frost’s poems.

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  3. I like your poem at the end. This one by Frost was vaguely familiar, had not read it in quite some time. Thanks for the reminder.

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  4. Frost is wonderful – one of my favorites and a wonderful inspiration

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  5. I discovered Robert Frost via a literature class… (Can’t have been English Lit. can it?) but it was ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’ and that stayed with me, except my flaky brain remembers it as ‘gate’ not ‘wall’!

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    • Thats from Mending Wall –
      SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a wall,
      That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
      And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
      And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
      That’s one of his that I find difficult to follow. My aging brain perhaps?

      Like

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