Writer’s Quote: Robert Frost

How time flies. I remember posting the first writer’s quote/poem of 2017, Thoughtless cruelty by Charles Lamb, and now, we are heading into the last month of 2017. Only four more weeks left and whoops, we’ll be writing “2018” on our date stamps.

This week, I chose a poem by one of many’s favourite poet- Robert Frost, and I believe, the poem befits this time of the year.

My November Guest by Robert Frost
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 walked 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.

When I read this poem, I understood “the guest” he referred to in the poem as a personification of the emotion he felt. But today, I came across an analysis which opened my eyes to another perspective. Here, the November guest was viewed as not just the personification of an inanimate thing, but as “a person herself”, which actually makes total sense.

It’s true, the saying- “we see what we look for and hear what we listen for”. There are many poems which give their sadness and sorrow, human characteristics; that was what I searched for in this poem and that was what I found. But I do agree now with the second analysis, “the November guest” might be a person.

Robert Frost is one with many famous poems. Which of his other poems come to mind?