It is past the season, but this is fine indeed, and it matches something of my mood and my To Do List.
Via the Laudator:
Robert Frost, Unharvested:
A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.
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This is splendid. Its conversational tone and simple diction breathe pure as a fall breeze out of the mountains of New Hampshire. Thanks for the post!
Beautiful poem from a poet who called himself “an Old Testament Christian.”
May something go always unharvested!
I remember as a child I used to marvel at the pure whiteness of the freshly fallen untouched snow. And it used to sadden me that soon it would be trampled. Interestingly, there are numerous references in the Bible to things that have been untouched, unused, reserved. Such as the tomb of Jesus in which “no one has been placed (Luk 23:53) or the donkey on which “no one has set” (Luk 19:30). Why did the Evangelists bother to mention those facts?
I expect this element of “untouchedness” to be experienced by the blessed in heaven. A most excellent sign of it, here on earth, is the desert. And also virginity. Being untouched, unused, is a reference to the source of all good, a return to the fountain, an encounter with the origin of life, with the very source of being. As soon as we begin using things they tend to become common, there is a loss of wonder, there is a distancing … I don’t know how to express what I feel – but the Evangelists did bother to tell us that “no one sat on that donkey before” and that “no one was put in that tomb before” – there’s got to be a reason. May some things always go unharvested indeed!