Robert Frost: Making
Robert Frost was American poet. Explore interesting quotes on making.“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
Title of poem (1942)
1940s
The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.
" Fragmentary Blue http://www.ketzle.com/frost/fragblue.htm", st. 1 (1923)
1920s
Dedication (1960)
Source: The Oven Bird (1916)
Context: There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Home Burial (1915)
Context: A man must partly give up being a man
With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement
By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you're a-mind to name.
Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.
Two that don't love can't live together without them.
But two that do can't live together with them."
She moved the latch a little. "Don't — don't go.
Don't carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it's something human.
Let me into your grief. I'm not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
Ten Mills : Not All There
1920s, Further Range (1926)
As quoted in Vogue (14 March 1963)
1960s
Variant: Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.
"Two Tramps in Mud Time" (1936), st. 9
General sources
" The Cow in Apple-Time http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cow-in-apple-time-the/"
1910s
"Home Burial" (1914)
1910s
1960s, Dedication (1960)
“The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.”
" The Bear http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bear-the/"
1920s