monday musings: getting frosty (pardon the pun)

Today I thought I would share some more poetry, this time from one of the most well known poets in America. Robert Frost. It's strange, because for some reason I've always thought of him as a super old poet, but one of my English professors in college actually knew him as a family friend.
This poem in particular haunts me because of its final stanza. It's slightly depressing, but something about it just stuck with me. I would find myself walking down the sidewalk on my way to archaeology class (which actually was not as exciting as I thought it might be when I registered for it) and the last four lines of this poem would just run through my head. Over and over again.

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 weeks and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.

All the animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lovely 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 the 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.

Robert Frost, 1936

David Strauss c2010