Frasi di Robert Lee Frost

pagina 8

“Due strade trovai nel bosco e io, | io scelsi quella meno battuta. | Ed è per questo che sono diverso.”

“La felicità compensa in altezza ciò che le manca in lunghezza.”

“Perché abbandonare una credenza solo perché cessa di essere vera? Aggrappatevi ad essa abbastanza a lungo e… sarà vera ancora una volta, perché così vanno le cose. La maggior parte dei cambiamenti che pensiamo di vedere nella vita sono dovuti a verità che entrano ed escono dal nostro favore.”

“I Boschi sono amabili ombrosi e profondi.
Ma ho promesse da mantenere,
e miglia da percorrere prima di riposare,
e miglia da percorrere prima di riposare.”

“Il cielo offre i suoi scorci solo a coloro che non sono in una posizione da poterlo guardare troppo da vicino.”

“La poesia inizia in delizia e finisce in saggezza.”

“Accumulare sapienza è male quanto accumulare denaro. Una volta o l'altra bisogna cominciare a far partecipi gli altri di ciò che si sa.”

“Buone recinzioni fanno buoni vicini.”

“Il modo migliore per venirne fuori è sempre buttarsi dentro.”

“La poesia è un modo di prendere la vita alla gola.”

“La tua casa è quel posto dove, se ci devi andare, sono costretti a farti entrare.”

“Quand'ero giovane erano i vecchi i miei maestri. | […] Andavo a scuola dai vecchi per imparare il passato. || Ora che sono vecchio ho per maestri i giovani. | Quel che non può modellarsi dev'essere infranto o piegato. | Lezioni mi torturano che riaprono antiche suture. | Vado a scuola dai giovani per imparare il futuro.”

“Tu ti puoi spingere | indietro per un ruscello di luce | al cielo. | E indietro nella storia sul corso | del tempo. | E questa rapidità ti fu data | non per affrettarti | né soprattutto per | andartene | dove vuoi. | Ma perché nella smania di spandersi | del tutto | a te spetti invece il potere di | fermarti.”

“Di chi sono questi boschi, penso di sapere.”

“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.”

“There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.”

“And be all plunderers curst.
'The best way to hate is the worst.
'Tis to find what the hated need,
Never mind of what actual worth,
And wipe that out of the earth.
Let them die of unsatisfied greed,
Of unsatisfied love of display,
Of unsatisfied love of the high,
Unvulgar, unsoiled, and ideal.
Let their trappings be taken away.
Let them suffer starvation and die
Of being brought down to the real.”

“To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.”

“But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.”

“The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;
New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.”

“And then we saw him bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray,
Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes.”

“I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
And the key rattled loudly into place
Seemed to warn someone to be getting out
At one door as we entered at another.”

“Such was life in the Golden Gate:
Gold dusted all we drank and ate,
And I was one of the children told,
'We all must eat our peck of gold.”

“The old dog barks backward without getting up;
I can remember when he was a pup.”

“Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.”

“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular…. The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.”

“Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)”

“The Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow.”

“We disparage reason.
But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.”

“If this uncertain age in which we dwell
Were really as dark as I hear sages tell,
And I convinced that they were really sages,
I should not curse myself with it to hell”

“God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.”

“I am assured at any rate
Man's practically inexterminate.
Someday I must go into that.
There's always been an Ararat
Where someone someone else begat
To start the world all over at.”

“You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.”

“No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!”

“She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."”

“Unless I'm wrong
I but obey
The urge of a song:
I'm—bound—away!

And I may return
If dissatisfied
With what I learn
From having died.”

“Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.”

“Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.
Join the United States and join the family —
But not much in between, unless a college.”

“My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.”

“It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.”

“Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.”

“The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.”

“All those who try to go it sole alone,
Too proud to be beholden for relief,
Are absolutely sure to come to grief.”