(paper) Leaves Compared with Flowers(1973) - Richard Foster

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(paper) Leaves Compared with Flowers:  a Reading in Robert Frost's Poems(1973) - Richard Foster

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Putting in the Seed / Mountain Interval(1916)

                     vs  Leaves Compared with Flowers / A Further Range(1936)

Mowing / A Boy's Will(1913)

                     vs The Last Mowing, Spring Pools / West-Running Brook(1928)

프로스트의 시각이 어떻게 변화하는지 쉽게 포착할 수 있는 듯.

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Putting in the Seed / Mountain Interval(1916)

You come to fetch me from my work tonight

When supper's on the table, and we'll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Leaves Compared with Flowers / A Further Range(1936)

A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, 
So may its bark, so may its wood, 
But unless you put the right thing to its root 
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care 
Ever to have tree bloom or bear. 
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough, 
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small 
They might as well have none at all. 
Late in life I have come on fern 
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief, 
Which is fairer, flower or leaf. 
They did not have the wit to say, 
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bark, leaves and bark, 
To lean against and hear in the dark. 
Petals I may have once pursued. 
Leaves are all my darker mood

Mowing / A Boy's Will(1913)

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

The Last Mowing / West-Running Brook(1928)

There's a place called Faraway Meadow

We never shall mow in again,

Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:

The meadow is finished with men.

Then now is the chance for the flowers

That can't stand mowers and plowers.

It must be now, though, in season

Before the not mowing brings trees on,

Before trees, seeing the opening,

March into a shadowy claim.

The trees are all I'm afraid of,

That flowers can't bloom in the shade of;

It's nor more men I'm afraid of,

That meadow is done with the tame.

The place for the moment is ours

For you, O tumultuous flowers,

To go to waste and go wild in,

All shapes and colors of flowers,

I needn't call you by name.

Spring Pools / West-Running Brook(1928)

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.

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Leaves Compared with Flowers - Richard Foster.pdf

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