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'Out, Out--' The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew
by PyWoody 3y ago
'Out, Out--'
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
or
'Desert Places'
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
are both pretty dark, off the top of my head. He has a number of poems that are more subtle and dig away at you in the best possible way.
- ghaff 3y agoYeah. Frost has some really dark poems. The chainsaw one is always my go-to example. I've had people basically not believe them when I've told them.
- hermanradtke 3y ago> chainsaw buzz saw - blade; no chain
- ghaff 3y agoThe actual text makes it sound a lot more like a chainsaw than something else but I don't actually know given the period written.
- bdamm 3y agoThe 1916 poem was based on a true story about a boy that Robert knew, who died in 1910. They did have circular-saw like machines in 1910 that were popular for cutting firewood, according to my wiki dive.
- mikestew 3y agoIt’s a fixed buzzsaw. One might be confused by the “leaped at his hand”, but Frost says in reality that “he must have given the hand”. Basically, his sister called him to supper, which apparently distracted the boy enough that he accidentally stuck his hand in the blade. A buzzsaw is in essence a large version of a table saw, and table saws eat many fingers and thumbs every year. Now imagine that the table saw blade is four feet tall.
- greenie_beans 3y agoi've got to pickup a frost book asap
- sevensor 3y agoMy weirdest Frost experience has been "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." My child received the gift of a lavishly illustrated picture book with the verse printed in it. The poem is so desolate, but as far as I could tell, neither the illustrator, nor the publisher, nor the gift-giver, had given it a moment's thought. There was even an illustration of a cheery farmhouse, with yellow lantern light spilling out the windows onto the snow. This farmhouse is precisely absent in the poem.
- throw1234651234 3y agoIt's probably the only poem I tried to memorize other than "Good Timber" by Malloch. I am ashamed to say I forgot both, other than 4 lines about "the woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep." I don't really know Frost's other poems either.
- PyWoody 3y agoA good Frost quick-hitter is 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. EDIT: If you're looking for one to memorize, I should say.