If You Were Coming In The Fall

Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the Fall,

I’d brush the Summer by

With half a smile, and half a spurn,

As Housewives do, a Fly.

 

If I could see you in a year,

I’d wind the months in balls —

And put them each in separate Drawers,

For fear the numbers fuse —

 

If only Centuries, delayed,

I’d count them on my Hand,

Subtracting, till my fingers dropped

Into Van Dieman’s Land.

 

If certain, when this life was out —

That yours and mine, should be

I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,

And take Eternity —

 

But, now, uncertain of the length

Of this, that is between,

It goads me, like the Goblin Bee —

That will not state — its sting.

 

This picture is one that I took in the summer of 2008 in my friend Parveen’s house in Calcutta.  She is the artist of this picture.

I’m not too familiar with all of Frost’s poems and didn’t know of this one until I stumbled onto it.  This one is titled, Once By The Pacific (reproduced below).  The imagery of the water being “shattered” against the shore as if it were a solid thing; the personification of the waves that think of “doing something” to the shore: something sudden and malevolent; the clouds that seem to have faces inside them with their unkempt hair being strewn about the dark sky as if they couldn’t care less about their appearance at this time of impending doom.  Yikes!  Is this the end?

The Sky Is Low, The Clouds Are Mean

— Emily Dickinson

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

One doesn’t really know if the choices one makes are always the right ones, but there’s something to be said for making a difficult one, i.e., taking the road less traveled.  Don’t know if that’s necessarily good, or right, or best, or even has that proverbial pot of gold at the end of it.  Perhaps with hindsight, one can call it one way or the other.  But, in the present moment, all one can do is make a choice.  And of course, chance will do her thing, come what may.

So, may it be that we find the courage to seize the day, nay, to seize the moment, and take a good look at that fork in the road, and if it is the road less traveled that appeals to you, well, then take it.  Otherwise, take the other one.  Regardless, make your choice!  With daring and conviction.  You can always look back and dissect your decision later. 

 

And as for Chance, well, I’ve heard that she favors the bold.

 

 The Road Not Taken

– Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair 

And having perhaps the better claim, 

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 

Though as for that, the passing there 

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay 

In leaves no step had trodden black 

Oh, I kept the first for another day! 

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I 

I took the one less traveled by, 

And that has made all the difference.

 

First published on Monday, November 3, 2008 in my private blog. 

The Human Seasons

John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness–to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.