Day 14

Vernal pools, "though in forests, still reflect / The total sky almost without defect."

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A poem for Robert Frost's birthday: "Spring Pools" by Robert Frost captures the fleeting beauty of vernal pools with a rhythm and rhyme that is as deceptively complicated and wondrous as the many natural cycles evoked in the poem. Try your own poem in A-A-B-C-B-C A-A-B-C-B-C and feel free to share it with me / our class.

Spring Pools

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

A Frostian song by the Boss: Bruce Springsteen's "Hello Sunshine" (from his most recent album, 2019's Western Stars) closes with - I think - a nod to Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Works Cited

Frost, Robert (1874-1963). "Spring Pools." The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, Macmillan, 1979, p. 245.

Springsteen, Bruce. "Hello Sunshine." Western Stars, 2019, Columbia.