Aaron has given his inaugural entry for Friday poetry at the 3ABC blog. I just want everyone to know that this was NOT my idea, though those who know me well may think that I protest too much. In truth, this was all Aaron’s idea. I happily embrace it and lead off with one of the most sublime poets the USA has ever produced. Robert Frost is our American Horace. If you would like to know why, read Randall Jarrell and countless others. I offer not one of his well known poems nor even one of his best, but still, a choice morsel:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Frost understands that nature cannot be romanticized, nor sentimentalized, but seeks to appreciate the gift of life despite its brevity and ultimate demise. The response to Frost is of course that we receive the gift of life we have and that a new and incorruptiple seed will one day provide life that does not sink, as it did in Eden, to grief.

Posted in Devotional |