Dear Olivia:
To select one poem from the world’s library of great poetry and declare it to be my favorite poem is as daunting a task as choosing one work of prose and claiming it to be the most significant. In the category of favorite poetry there are any number of selections I could make reaching across the ages back to the time of King David in ancient Israel and going forward to the last decade of the twentieth century.
There is a tendency, completely understandable, for people to react especially favorably to literature that was authored in a geographical setting that they know very well. It is from that perspective that I have chosen to respond to your request by submitting, as one of my favorite expressions, a simple poem entitled “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The author is Robert Frost, whose literary skill mirrors so clearly the life and labors of rural people who live in New England. My family own a home on a Vermont mountaintop and the scene that Robert Frost evokes in this poem is one with which I am well familiar as I trek through the snow-filled woods on a cold winter’s day. I have seen the solitary house and the frozen lake and I have heard the sounds of harness bells. I know, as well, that in the beautiful solitude, while walking alone in those woods filled with birch and maple, that I cannot remain there, for there are things still to be done, indeed promises to keep.
Thank you for asking me to contribute to this wonderful project upon which you are engaging to raise the consciousness of people, so that they will be concerned for refugee children so desperately in need of help.
Yours sincerely,
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
