Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Longest Evening of the Year

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, 1923.

2 comments:

My Daily Struggles said...

So much "work, time and error" as Erik Erikson said about Freud. So many miles!

My Daily Struggles said...

Freud at times expressed some despair and confessed to some neurotic symptoms which reveal phenomological aspects of a creative crisis. He suffered from a “railroad phobia” and from acute fears of an early death—both symptoms of an over-concern with the all too rapid passage of time. “Railroad phobia” is an awkwardly clinical way of translating Reisefieber—a feverish combination of pleasant excitement and anxiety. But it all meant, it seems, on more than one level that he was “coming too late,” that he was “missing the train,” that he would perish before reaching some “promised land.” He could not see how he could complete what he had visualized if every single step took so much "work, time and error."

Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility.