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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TOO ANXIOUS FOR RIVERS, by ROBERT FROST Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: Look down the long valley and there stands a mountain
Last Line: To find ‘twas the effort, the essay of love
Subject(s): Rivers
First Line: Look down the long valley and there stands a mountain
Last Line: To find ‘twas the effort, the essay of love
Subject(s): Rivers
Look down the long valley and there stands a mountain
That someone has said is the end of the world.
Then what of this river that having arisen
Must find where to pour itself into and empty?
I never saw so much swift water run cloudless.
Oh, I have been often too anxious for rivers
To leave it to them to get out of their valleys.
The truth is the river flows into the canyon
Of Ceasing-to-Question-What-Doesn't-Concern-Us,
As sooner or later we have to cease somewhere.
No place to get lost like too far in the distance.
It may be a mercy the dark closes round us
So broodingly soon in every direction.
The world as we know is an elephant's howdah;
The elephant stands on the back of a turtle;
The turtle in turn on a rock in the ocean.
And how much longer a story has science
Before she must put out the light on the children
And tell them the rest of the story is dreaming?
"You children may dream it and tell it tomorrow."
Time was we were molten, time was we were vapor.
What set us on fire and what set us revolving,
Lucretius the Epicurean might tell us
Twas something we knew all about to begin with
And needn't have fared into space like his master
To find 'twas the effort, the essay of love.
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HE FINDS THE MANSION by JAMES MCMICHAEL
THE RIVERS by CLARIBEL ALEGRIA
VERMILION FLYCATCHER, SAN PEDRO RIVER, ARIZONA by MARGARET ATWOOD
THE PORCH OVER THE RIVER by WENDELL BERRY
THE RIVER BRIDGED AND FORGOT by WENDELL BERRY