pō’ĭ-trē

Robert Frost

Listen

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.

It’s that time of the year in Philadelphia. Every time I step out of my apartment I’m reminded of this Frost poem, seeing the wet misery of the trees, the damp carpet of leaves underfoot, the gentle melancholy of the scene. It’s a time of year that cries out for a poem that celebrates “the love of bare November days / Before the coming of the snow” and I can’t think of one more evocative than this.

[falstaff]