2001-06-28 - 9:49 a.m.
Frost and the curiously positive effects of depression

I was inspired yesterday to do some searching on the Internet for my favorite poems. The list is very long, so I won't list them now, but I'll file them away in a directory on my site soon, for the curious to peruse. There's one I'd like to list out in full today, however, that stood out:

Into My Own
by Robert Frost - 1913

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

I once heard a poet say that poems are harder to write than books, for you have to master the art of packing so much thought and emotion into so few words. When reading good poetry, I would tend to agree ... but then I pick up a good novel, and think of what I once heard an author say: books are harder to write than poems, for you have keep the reader's attention over a much longer distance. *grin* I have decided not to weigh in on either side of this debate!

*sigh* The weather has gone grey again (what drought?!) and I find myself once more in a mildy melancholy mood. I've always been afflicted by that sunlight-deprivation depression that always makes the news at least once every winter. It's not really such a depresssing thing to me, though; it can certainly lend itself to depression, given the occurence of negative events, but is more generally just a feeling of yearning. I think I write my best stories in awful weather ... it inspires me to try harder!