The Raven

By Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

First published in 1845

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

About the Poem

With Halloween just a few days away, I could hardly resist choosing one of my favorite poems, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Of course, I love nearly all of Poe’s poetry. There is something hauntingly beautiful about his writing, the way he can take grief, loneliness, fear, and longing and transform them into something almost musical. His poetry is dark, certainly, but it is also extraordinarily beautiful.

Whenever I read “The Raven,” I always hear it in the unmistakable voice of Vincent Price. Price made a famous recording of the poem, and I suspect many people of my generation remember a teacher pulling that record from its sleeve, carefully placing it on the classroom record player, and lowering the needle. Then came that wonderfully theatrical voice, deep, resonant, and just sinister enough to send a chill down your spine. Price had a remarkable ability to make even the simplest words sound deliciously ominous, and his reading of “The Raven” was unforgettable. I can still hear him uttering “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’” with just the right mixture of melancholy and menace. For me, Poe’s poetry and Vincent Price’s voice will forever be connected.

Incidentally, I came across the job posting for Curator of Educational Programs at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles just this morning. As much as I admire Vincent Price and love the idea of working at a museum bearing his name, I have absolutely no desire to live in Los Angeles. Still, I couldn’t help smiling at the coincidence.

What I find most compelling about “The Raven” is that, beneath its Gothic atmosphere and supernatural suggestions, it is really a poem about grief. The raven itself may be nothing more than an ordinary bird that has learned a single word, but the narrator gives that word increasingly terrible meaning. He asks questions to which he desperately wants comforting answers, even as he seems to know what the raven will say. His torment comes not necessarily from the bird, but from his own inability to escape his sorrow.

Perhaps that is what makes the poem so frightening. There is no monster lurking in the darkness, no ghost rising from the grave, and no murderer waiting behind the door. Instead, the horror comes from within, from the memories and regrets that haunt us long after someone we love is gone. The raven becomes a symbol of a grief that refuses to leave, and its repeated “Nevermore” is the terrible finality of loss.

And yet, even with all its sorrow, I find “The Raven” magnificent. Poe’s language, rhythm, and imagery make it a poem that demands to be read aloud, preferably on a dark and stormy night. If you can manage to hear Vincent Price narrating it, so much the better.

First published on January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening Mirror, “The Raven” became an immediate sensation and established Edgar Allan Poe as one of America’s most recognizable literary figures. Its popularity was extraordinary, and readers were captivated by its hypnotic rhythm, intricate rhymes, and mysterious atmosphere.

The poem follows an unnamed narrator mourning the death of his beloved Lenore. Alone in his chamber on a bleak December night, he hears a tapping at his door and then at his window. When he opens the shutter, a raven enters and settles upon a bust of Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The bird speaks only one word, “Nevermore,” but the narrator gradually interprets that word as a series of increasingly devastating answers to his questions about grief, hope, and the possibility of reunion with Lenore in the afterlife.

Poe was a master of poetic sound. “The Raven” employs trochaic octameter, internal rhyme, alliteration, and repetition to create its distinctive, almost hypnotic musicality. The recurring “Nevermore” serves as a refrain, becoming more ominous with each appearance. What begins as a curious encounter gradually develops into a psychological nightmare.

In his 1846 essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe described his approach to writing “The Raven,” explaining his deliberate choices of subject, atmosphere, and poetic structure. He argued that the death of a beautiful woman was among the most melancholy subjects in poetry and that a raven, with its dark appearance and capacity to imitate human speech, was an ideal messenger for the poem’s refrain.

The raven’s perch upon the bust of Pallas Athena is also significant. Athena represents wisdom and reason, yet the narrator increasingly abandons rational thought as his grief overwhelms him. The bird’s position above the door suggests an inescapable presence, while its final shadow becomes a powerful symbol of the narrator’s despair.

Although “The Raven” is frequently associated with Halloween, its enduring appeal goes far beyond its Gothic imagery. It explores the universal human experience of mourning and the painful realization that some losses cannot be undone.

About the Poet

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short-story writer, literary critic, and editor whose work helped shape Gothic literature, psychological horror, and the modern detective story. His influence extends far beyond American literature into film, music, and popular culture.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe experienced tragedy early in life. His father abandoned the family, and his mother died when he was only two years old. He was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia, though he was never formally adopted. His relationship with John Allan was often strained, particularly over financial matters.

Poe attended the University of Virginia briefly and later enlisted in the United States Army. He also entered the United States Military Academy at West Point but was dismissed in 1831. He eventually pursued a career in writing and editing, working for several literary publications while struggling with financial insecurity.

In 1836, Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm, who was thirteen at the time. Their marriage lasted until her death from tuberculosis in 1847. Virginia’s illness and death profoundly affected Poe, and themes of lost love, mortality, and mourning appear repeatedly throughout his poetry and fiction.

Among his best-known poems are “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” “Ulalume,” and “A Dream Within a Dream.” His short stories, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” remain classics of Gothic horror. His 1841 story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is widely regarded as a foundational work of modern detective fiction.

Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at the age of forty. The circumstances surrounding his death remain uncertain, adding one final mystery to a life that has become almost as legendary as his writing.

Although Poe struggled to achieve financial stability during his lifetime, his literary legacy has proved extraordinary. His ability to explore the darkest corners of the human imagination while maintaining a remarkable sense of beauty and musicality continues to captivate readers nearly two centuries later.

Perhaps that is why Poe remains such a perfect poet for Halloween. His writing reminds us that the most haunting things are not always the supernatural horrors that lurk in the shadows, but the very human emotions that remain with us long after the darkness has passed.

And as the raven would remind us, some things stay with us forevermore.

Double, Double Toil and Trouble

From Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I

By William Shakespeare

The Three Witches, casting a spell

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast thirty one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

---

About the Poem

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to turn to one of the most famous scenes of witchcraft in English literature. Few lines from Shakespeare are as instantly recognizable as “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” Even people who have never read or seen Macbeth probably know those words. They have become so closely associated with witches, bubbling cauldrons, and Halloween that it is sometimes easy to forget their rather sinister origins.

I used to love teaching Macbeth. Along with Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it remains one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. I have always been fascinated by the supernatural elements of Macbeth, but what makes the play truly compelling is that the greatest evil does not necessarily come from the witches. It comes from human ambition, greed, jealousy, and the willingness to commit terrible acts in pursuit of power. The witches may plant the seeds of ambition in Macbeth’s mind, but he is the one who chooses to act upon them.

When I was teaching, I was also in charge of the Drama Club, and I was always looking for ways to make Shakespeare more entertaining and accessible to my students. At one point, I even wrote a play of my own that incorporated scenes from several of Shakespeare’s works.

The play was set in a college dorm room, much like the one in today’s picture. It began with a student struggling to complete an assignment for a Shakespeare class. The professor had asked the students to choose what they considered the greatest scene Shakespeare ever wrote and explain why. Of course, anyone who loves Shakespeare knows what an impossible assignment that would be.

As the student considered various possibilities, the scenes would come to life onstage. The actors would perform a scene, and then the student would explain why, despite its brilliance, it wasn’t quite the right choice. Today’s scene from Macbeth, with the Three Witches chanting around their cauldron, was one of those possibilities.

The play continued through several of Shakespeare’s most memorable scenes, with the student considering each one before deciding that it wasn’t quite the right choice. For the final scene, I chose Puck’s closing speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of my favorite passages in all of Shakespeare:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.

As Puck finished his speech, the student woke up, discovering that the entire ordeal had been nothing more than a dream. There was no impossible assignment, no need to choose the greatest scene Shakespeare ever wrote, and certainly no need to explain why all the other wonderful scenes weren’t quite good enough.

I thought it was a fitting ending. After all, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is itself a play about the strange boundary between dreams and reality. Having Puck assure the audience that everything they had witnessed might have been a dream, only for the student to awaken and discover that it actually was, seemed like the perfect way to bring the story full circle.

Whenever I taught Macbeth, I also liked to show students two very different film adaptations. The first was the 2010 production starring Patrick Stewart, which features some of the creepiest witches I have ever seen. Rather than the traditional old hags gathered around a cauldron, these witches appear as sinister nurses in a nightmarish world of violence and paranoia. Their unsettling appearance makes them all the more frightening.

The second was Scotland, PA (2001), a dark comedy that transports Shakespeare’s tragedy to a fast-food restaurant in 1970s Pennsylvania. Instead of three terrifying witches, we get three pot-smoking hippies, including one played by Andy Dick. They first appear on a Ferris wheel, offering their own rather unconventional version of supernatural wisdom. It’s a wonderfully absurd adaptation, but underneath the comedy, the familiar themes of ambition, murder, guilt, and fate remain.

One of the things I love most about Shakespeare is that his plays can be reimagined almost endlessly without losing their essential meaning. Whether the witches are terrifying supernatural creatures, sinister nurses, or three stoners on a Ferris wheel, their role remains much the same. They tempt Macbeth with the possibility of greatness while leaving him to make the choices that will ultimately destroy him.

Perhaps that is the most frightening thing about Macbeth. The witches do not have to force anyone to do evil. Sometimes all they have to do is tell us what we want to hear.

Commonly known as “The Witches’ Chant” or “Double, Double Toil and Trouble,” this passage comes from Act IV, Scene I of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, generally believed to have been written around 1606. The three witches, also known as the Weird Sisters, gather around a cauldron to prepare a magical potion before Macbeth arrives seeking further prophecies about his future.

The passage is remarkable for its rhythm, imagery, and theatricality. Unlike much of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse, which is written in iambic pentameter, the witches frequently speak in shorter, heavily accented rhyming lines. The repeated refrain creates an almost hypnotic rhythm, suggesting the chanting of a magical incantation. The grotesque ingredients, ranging from the eye of a newt to the finger of a murdered infant, heighten the sense of horror while giving the scene a darkly imaginative quality.

Some of the ingredients also reflect the prejudices and fears of Shakespeare’s time. References to Jews, Turks, and Tartars draw upon the religious and cultural hostility familiar to Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. These lines remind us that literature can preserve not only the imagination of an earlier age but also its uglier assumptions.

The witches are especially interesting because of their connection to King James I. Before becoming king of England in 1603, James had ruled Scotland as James VI. He was deeply fascinated by witchcraft and believed witches posed a genuine threat to society. In 1597, he published Daemonologie, a treatise examining witchcraft, sorcery, and demonic activity.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth was probably written with James in mind. The king’s supposed ancestor, Banquo, appears in the play as a noble figure whose descendants are prophesied to become kings. Although modern historians generally regard Banquo as legendary rather than historical, the connection would have been particularly flattering to James.

There is also a fascinating scholarly debate about the witches themselves. While they are generally considered an essential part of Shakespeare’s original play, some scholars believe that portions of their scenes were added or revised later, possibly by the playwright Thomas Middleton. In particular, the scenes involving Hecate, the goddess associated with witchcraft, have long been suspected of being later additions. Similar songs appear in Middleton’s play The Witch. Whether these changes were made to enhance the supernatural spectacle or to satisfy changing theatrical tastes remains a matter of debate.

Whatever their origins, the witches have become among the most memorable characters in Shakespeare’s works. Their chant has survived for more than four centuries, finding its way into films, television, literature, and countless Halloween celebrations.

About the Poet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, he became a leading figure in London’s theatrical world during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.

Shakespeare wrote approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and several longer narrative poems. His works include tragedies such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth; comedies such as Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and historical plays exploring the lives and reigns of English monarchs.

What makes Shakespeare so enduring is his extraordinary understanding of human nature. His characters struggle with love, jealousy, ambition, betrayal, grief, and the desire for power in ways that remain recognizable more than four hundred years later. His language can be beautiful, terrifying, humorous, or heartbreaking, sometimes within the same scene.

Macbeth is one of his shortest and darkest tragedies. Its exploration of ambition, guilt, fate, and moral corruption continues to resonate with audiences today. The witches may provide some of the play’s most memorable moments, but the true horror lies in Macbeth’s gradual destruction of his own humanity.

And perhaps that is why, centuries later, we are still captivated by three witches chanting around a bubbling cauldron.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
By Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

About the Poem

There is something both beautiful and heartbreaking about autumn in Vermont. The mountains become a tapestry of brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows, and for a brief time, the landscape seems almost too beautiful to be real. The golden leaves shimmer in the sunlight, and the crisp air carries the unmistakable feeling of change. Yet, even as we admire the beauty surrounding us, we know it cannot last. Before long, the leaves will fall, the trees will stand bare, and winter will settle over the mountains.

Robert Frost understood this fleeting beauty. In just eight short lines, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” captures one of life’s most difficult truths: the things we cherish most are often the things we cannot hold on to forever.

Frost begins with the earliest moments of spring, when new leaves emerge with a golden hue before settling into their familiar green. It is a moment of extraordinary beauty, but one that disappears almost as soon as it arrives. From there, he moves beyond the natural world to something more profound. The loss of Eden reminds us that even paradise was not permanent, while the passing of dawn into daylight suggests that every beginning carries within it the certainty of change.

We often associate loss with sadness, and understandably so. We grieve the passing of loved ones, the ending of relationships, the fading of youth, and the opportunities that slipped through our fingers. Sometimes, we long to return to a particular moment in our lives, a time when everything seemed possible and happiness felt effortless. We remember people who made us feel loved, places where we felt at home, and experiences we wish we could live through just one more time.

But perhaps Frost’s poem also offers us a reason to appreciate those moments more deeply. Their impermanence does not make them any less meaningful. If anything, knowing that something will not last forever should encourage us to treasure it while we can.

I think about how much life changes, often in ways we never could have imagined. People enter our lives and leave them. Friendships evolve. Dreams are fulfilled, abandoned, or replaced by dreams we never knew we had. We change, too. The person we are today is not the person we were ten or twenty years ago. Some of those changes come through joy, others through heartbreak, but all of them become part of who we are.

There is a temptation to look backward and believe that the best moments of our lives are behind us. Yet, I don’t think Frost is necessarily telling us that beauty disappears forever. Rather, he reminds us that beauty is constantly changing. The gold of spring gives way to the green of summer, just as the gold of autumn eventually gives way to winter. And after winter, spring will come again.

That does not mean we can recover everything we have lost. Some people and some moments are gone forever, and pretending otherwise would diminish the significance of our grief. But it does mean that life can still surprise us with unexpected beauty, even after we have experienced tremendous loss.

Perhaps the lesson is not to cling so desperately to what is passing that we fail to appreciate what is right in front of us. We cannot stop the seasons from changing, any more than we can stop time itself. What we can do is recognize the golden moments when they come, embrace them wholeheartedly, and carry their memories with us when they are gone.

As I look at the autumn colors covering the Vermont hillsides, I know that their brilliance will soon fade. The leaves will fall, and the landscape will become quieter and more subdued. But for now, the trees are golden, the mountains are beautiful, and there is something wonderful about simply being here to witness it.

Nothing gold can stay, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cherish every golden moment.

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” was first published in 1923 in The Yale Review and later appeared in Robert Frost’s collection New Hampshire (1923), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1924.

Despite its brevity, the poem is among Frost’s most celebrated works. Its eight lines follow a tightly structured rhyme scheme of AABBCCDD, with each pair of lines forming a rhyming couplet. The predominantly three-beat rhythm gives the poem a deceptively simple, almost musical quality.

Frost uses the natural progression of a leaf’s development as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of beauty, innocence, and perfection. The opening image of gold becoming green suggests that even the most beautiful beginnings are temporary. His reference to the Garden of Eden introduces a biblical dimension, connecting the natural cycle of change with humanity’s loss of innocence and paradise.

The final line, “Nothing gold can stay,” is both the poem’s title and its central truth. Its simplicity makes it memorable, while its meaning invites readers to consider their own experiences of change, love, and loss.

The poem also gained wider recognition through S. E. Hinton’s 1967 novel The Outsiders and its 1983 film adaptation. In the story, the poem becomes a symbol of youthful innocence and the importance of holding on to the goodness and beauty within ourselves, even when life becomes difficult.

Although Frost offers no explicit consolation, the poem’s power lies in its ability to express a universal human experience. Everything changes, and nothing remains untouched by time. Yet the very brevity of life’s golden moments is part of what makes them precious.

About the Poet

Robert Frost (1874–1963) was one of America’s most beloved and influential poets. Born in San Francisco, California, Frost became closely associated with rural New England, particularly New Hampshire and Vermont, whose landscapes, people, and traditions inspired much of his writing.

Although Frost often wrote about seemingly ordinary subjects, such as stone walls, snowy woods, apple orchards, and country roads, his poetry explored profound questions about human nature, relationships, isolation, mortality, and the choices we make in life.

His work is distinguished by its conversational language, traditional poetic forms, and ability to uncover deeper meanings in familiar experiences. Frost believed that poetry should reflect the rhythms of everyday speech, and his poems frequently combine accessible language with complex philosophical ideas.

Among his best-known works are “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Mending Wall,” “Birches,” and “Fire and Ice.”

Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, an achievement that helped establish him as one of the defining literary voices of twentieth-century America. In 1961, at the age of 86, he recited “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, becoming the first poet to participate in a U.S. presidential inauguration.

Frost also maintained a deep connection to Vermont. He lived for many years in the state, including periods in Shaftsbury and Ripton, and taught at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. The New England landscape was never merely a backdrop for his poetry; it was a source of inspiration through which he examined the complexities of human existence.

More than a century after its publication, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” remains a testament to Frost’s remarkable ability to express life’s greatest truths in just a handful of words.

Nine Bluegills

By Stuart Dybek

Gutted, scaled, rinsed with the water they swam in,
lie on my uncle’s dock from which they were caught.
Loon Lake is opaque with sunset, but in the dock’s shadow
crawdads on a blue sand bottom gather for a feast.

Tonight, fish in frothing butter will brown in cast iron pans,
but now is the hour of panfish striking a mayfly hatch
as plash by echoing plash, the lake hidden by willows
and pines becomes a reflection from which the moon

rises, “born like us to kiss the water,” my cousin Vera says.
Home from frosh year at Oberlin, summoned by loons
for a night swim, she stands robed in a white towel, her wand,

a Hamm’s, foams in the glow of the kerosene lantern brought
to see my catch and to guide her back to the dock in the dark.
I’m fourteen, on my knees cleaning bluegills.

About the Poem

Every once in a while, I come across a poem that transports me almost instantly to another place and another time. Stuart Dybek’s “Nine Bluegills” did that for me.

It was the bluegills that first caught my attention, but then I reached the line about “panfish striking a mayfly hatch,” and suddenly I was no longer simply reading a poem. I was remembering the Alabama River.

Growing up, I always loved fishing for bream. Bluegill are one kind of what we Southerners generally call bream, and some of my fondest fishing memories are of catching them at our place on the Alabama River. When the mayflies were out, we would catch them and use them for bait, and the bream would bite one after another. There was something exciting about dropping your line into the water and knowing there was a pretty good chance that another fish would soon be tugging at it.

I also loved throwing a cast net for shad. There was a particular satisfaction in getting the net to open just right before it hit the water and then pulling it back in to see what you had caught. We never ate the shad. They were far too small and were generally used for bait.

There was something else about throwing that net that made it special to me. I was not the manliest of sons. I was Daddy’s little sissy son who would often rather have been reading a book than doing many of the things boys were expected to enjoy, and I know there were times when that embarrassed him. But there was one thing I could do that made Daddy proud: I could cast that net.

Throwing a cast net properly takes just the right technique. You have to know how to hold it, how to turn your body, and exactly when to release it so that the net opens into a near-perfect circle before it lands on the water. You also have to learn to watch the river. There was a particular ripple on the surface that told you a school of shad was moving underneath, and you had to recognize it and get the net where it needed to be at just the right moment.

I could do it perfectly.

Daddy couldn’t.

And he loved to show me off doing it.

Looking back, I think that is part of why the memory means so much to me. There were plenty of ways in which I wasn’t the kind of son Daddy might have imagined having, but standing there beside the Alabama River with that cast net in my hands, none of that mattered. This was something I was good at—better at than he was, in fact, and better than anyone else we knew—and he was proud of me. For a boy who knew that some parts of who he was could embarrass his father, those moments of seeing Daddy proud of me mattered more than I probably understood at the time.

Not all of my fishing memories are from the river, though. Sometimes Daddy and Granddaddy would go to a neighbor’s catfish pond. They were there for the catfish. I was usually much happier fishing for bream.

As it turned out, the owner of the pond was perfectly happy for me to do just that. Bream can become a nuisance in a catfish pond because they compete with the catfish for food and reproduce so readily. So while Daddy and Granddaddy concentrated on catching the fish they wanted, I could happily spend my time catching the fish the pond owner wanted taken out. Everybody won—except, I suppose, the bream.

Dybek even managed to bring back another fishing memory with his crawdads gathering beneath the dock. We usually called them crawfish rather than crawdads, and I remember them for a slightly different reason.

Occasionally, we would fish in a creek near our house. One of the most annoying things that could happen was to pull in your line thinking you had caught something only to discover a crawfish on the hook. Getting one of those suckers off could be an adventure because those claws were ready to pinch whatever fingers came close enough.

Worse than a crawfish was a turtle.

A turtle on your hook meant figuring out how to get the hook out without getting bitten, and if it happened to be a snapping turtle, you had to be especially careful. Snapping turtles have extraordinarily powerful jaws, and I grew up hearing the old folklore that if one ever bit you, it wouldn’t let go until it thundered. I’m fairly certain none of us wanted to test the accuracy of that particular bit of country wisdom.

We rarely ate the bream we caught. They have so many little bones that eating them can be more trouble than they are worth. Daddy usually cut them up and used them for bait. Granddaddy was the exception. He loved fried bream. He also liked small catfish fried whole, with their tails and fins still attached. Some of you may find the thought of that a little squeamish, but that was simply part of fishing and fish fries when I was growing up.

In fact, fishing was once important enough to me that when I was in high school and we were assigned an essay on the best lifelong sport, I chose fishing. I argued that unlike many sports, fishing was something a person could enjoy throughout life.

As it turns out, I don’t fish anymore. I haven’t in many years. In one sense, perhaps that makes my high-school argument a little less convincing. In another sense, though, maybe I was more right than I realized. Fishing has remained with me. I may no longer sit on the bank or in a boat waiting for a cork to disappear beneath the water, but those memories have lasted a lifetime.

And when I think about fishing, I inevitably think about fish fries.

Fish fries were family affairs. Daddy or Grandmama usually manned the fryer, and both of them were particular about how things were done. There would be a brown paper bag containing cornmeal. The fish went into the bag, the bag got shaken until the fish were thoroughly coated, and then into the hot oil they went. When they were done, they were put into another paper bag to drain.

Then there were more brown paper bags—one for the French fries and another for the hushpuppies.

Grandmama was especially particular about her hushpuppies. They had to be made just the right way. There was a proper way to mix them, a proper consistency, and a proper way to fry them. I could go into the details, but that is probably a story for another day. Suffice it to say that Grandmama knew exactly how she wanted them, and you didn’t improve upon Grandmama’s cooking by suggesting she do something differently.

I made that mistake once when I made cornbread for her without putting eggs in it. Mama didn’t use eggs in her cornbread, so that was the way I had learned to make it. Grandmama, however, did use eggs, and you did not mess with Grandmama’s way of cooking. I learned my lesson. She taught me nearly all of my basic cooking skills, and if Grandmama said there was a right way to make something, then as far as she was concerned, that was the way you made it.

Mama usually made the coleslaw. Everybody loved her coleslaw because she put tomatoes in it. My sister and I, however, hated tomatoes, so Mama always made a separate batch without tomatoes just for us.

And, of course, there was dessert.

There might be pound cake, caramel cake, or coconut cake. Sometimes there was Grandmama’s chocolate pie, another recipe about which she had very definite ideas. And this was the South, so there was almost always some sort of congealed salad somewhere on the table. Every once in a while, though, we got an extra-special treat: Grandmama would get out the ice cream maker and make homemade ice cream.

You simply cannot buy ice cream quite like homemade ice cream. The closest I have ever found is Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Light. Oddly enough, I think the regular Homemade Vanilla is too sweet, but the light version is just about right. The consistency isn’t the same as what came out of Grandmama’s ice cream maker, but the taste comes remarkably close.

All of those memories came flooding back because of fourteen lines about nine bluegills.

That’s one of the things I love most about poetry. A poem doesn’t have to tell our story to remind us of it. Dybek’s Loon Lake is not my Alabama River. His uncle’s dock isn’t the place where I caught bream with mayflies. His cast-iron pans aren’t Daddy’s or Grandmama’s fryer. His crawdads aren’t the crawfish that irritated me when I found one at the end of my line. Yet something in those details reaches across all those differences.

Dybek ends the poem with himself at fourteen, kneeling on the dock and cleaning his bluegills. It’s such an ordinary moment. There is no grand revelation and no dramatic conclusion. A boy caught some fish, and now he is cleaning them.

But ordinary moments don’t always remain ordinary.

We rarely recognize the moments that will become precious memories while we’re living them. Nobody announces that this particular summer evening, this particular fishing trip, this particular fish fry, this particular time standing beside your father or grandfather or grandmother is something you will remember decades later. At the time, it’s simply life.

Then one day you read a poem about bluegills and mayflies and crawdads, and suddenly it’s all there again: the Alabama River, the neighbor’s catfish pond, the creek near home, the fishing, the cast net opening perfectly over the water, Daddy watching with pride, the paper bags, the cornmeal, the hot grease, the hushpuppies, Mama’s coleslaw, Grandmama’s desserts, homemade ice cream, and the people who made those ordinary days special.

I don’t fish anymore.

But I suppose I still carry fishing with me.

“Nine Bluegills” is a poem built from a remembered moment: a fourteen-year-old speaker cleaning the day’s catch on his uncle’s dock while evening settles over Loon Lake. Around that simple activity, Dybek creates an entire summer world—the crawdads beneath the dock, the mayfly hatch, the moon reflected on the lake, loons calling in the darkness, his cousin Vera preparing for a night swim, and the promise that the freshly caught fish will soon become dinner.

What makes the poem particularly effective is its attention to physical detail. Dybek doesn’t tell us that this is a memory worth preserving. Instead, he preserves it by showing us exactly what was there. The result is something larger than a fishing poem. It becomes a poem about youth, family, place, and those seemingly insignificant moments that memory somehow decides to keep.

That quality is characteristic of Dybek’s writing. Memory and place are recurring elements in both his poetry and fiction. Perhaps that is why “Nine Bluegills” affected me as strongly as it did. Dybek gives us one remembered summer evening, and in doing so, he invites us into memories of our own.

About the Poet

Stuart Dybek was born in Chicago in 1942 and grew up on the city’s South Side. He attended Loyola University Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is both a poet and an acclaimed writer of short fiction. His poetry collections include Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink, while his fiction includes Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, I Sailed with Magellan, Ecstatic Cahoots, and Paper Lantern.

Memory, place, family, and the details of everyday life recur throughout Dybek’s work. Although much of his writing is rooted in the working-class neighborhoods of Chicago where he grew up, his combination of precise observation and memory often allows very specific places and experiences to take on a more universal quality.

Dybek has received numerous honors for his writing, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Lannan Literary Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies.

A Meeting

By Edith Wharton

On a sheer peak of joy we meet;
Below us hums the abyss;
Death either way allures our feet
If we take one step amiss.

One moment let us drink the blue
Transcendent air together—
Then down where the same old work’s to do
In the same dull daily weather.

We may not wait . . . yet look below!
How part? On this keen ridge
But one may pass. They call you—go!
My life shall be your bridge.

About the Poem

There are encounters in our lives that seem to exist outside ordinary time. For a few hours, a few days, or perhaps only a few moments, another person makes the rest of the world seem very far away. Edith Wharton captures that feeling beautifully in “A Meeting.” Two people have found themselves together on what she calls a “sheer peak of joy,” suspended above everything ordinary and mundane.

But they cannot remain there.

The imagery Wharton uses makes their happiness feel exhilarating and dangerous at the same time. They stand high above an abyss, knowing that one wrong step could destroy everything. Yet for one moment, they can simply “drink the blue / Transcendent air together.” There is something almost intoxicating about those lines. Whatever circumstances surround these two people, their brief time together allows them to experience something beyond their everyday existence.

Then reality intrudes.

They must return to “the same old work” and “the same dull daily weather.” I think that contrast is something most of us can understand. Life is made up largely of ordinary days—work, chores, responsibilities, appointments, errands, and routines. Yet occasionally someone enters our lives who makes everything feel different. The world seems brighter. The ordinary becomes extraordinary simply because we are sharing it with someone who matters to us.

Sometimes those people remain with us. Sometimes they cannot.

Wharton never tells us exactly who these two people are or why they must part. That ambiguity gives the poem much of its power. We can imagine lovers separated by circumstances, two people whose relationship is forbidden or impossible, or even two souls who have simply reached a place where their paths can no longer continue together. Whatever the reason, they have reached a narrow ridge where “but one may pass.”

And then comes that extraordinary final line:

“My life shall be your bridge.”

For me, that is where the poem becomes something more than a poem about separation. It becomes a poem about love and sacrifice.

The speaker does not say, If I cannot have you, neither of us will go forward. Nor does the speaker demand that the other person remain behind. Instead, the response is essentially: Go. If only one of us can continue, I will help you get there.

There is something profoundly loving about that idea.

We often think of love as holding on. Sometimes love is exactly that—fighting to remain together when circumstances try to pull us apart. But love can also mean wanting another person to flourish even when we cannot accompany them. It can mean recognizing that someone we love has a road ahead of them that we cannot travel beside them.

That does not make the love meaningless.

If anything, the final line suggests that love can continue to shape another person’s life even after two people have parted. We become part of the bridge that carried them from one place in their life to another. They become part of ours as well.

For LGBTQ+ people, that idea can have particular resonance. Many of us have known relationships, friendships, or moments of intimacy shaped by circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes fear, distance, family expectations, religion, society, or simply the timing of our lives has made something precious difficult or impossible to sustain. Earlier generations of LGBTQ+ people faced even greater barriers to openly building lives together. Yet the love itself was no less real because circumstances forced it into brief or hidden moments.

Perhaps that is why the unnamed lovers of Wharton’s poem can feel so universal. We do not know who they are. We do not know what stands between them. We only know that for one transcendent moment they have found one another.

And sometimes one moment can change a life.

Not every love is forever. Not every person who changes us is meant to walk beside us for the rest of our lives. Some people meet us only briefly on the mountaintop. We breathe that rare air together, and eventually we return to the ordinary world below.

But we do not return unchanged.

Some people become part of the bridge that carries us forward.

“A Meeting” appeared in Edith Wharton’s Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1909. Although Wharton is remembered primarily as a novelist and short-story writer, she also wrote poetry throughout her literary career.

The poem consists of three four-line stanzas and moves almost like a miniature drama. The first stanza establishes the precarious meeting on the mountaintop; the second allows the pair a fleeting moment of transcendence before returning to ordinary life; and the third confronts the inevitable separation.

Wharton’s landscape is both physical and metaphorical. The peak represents the extraordinary height of the meeting, while the abyss suggests danger, loss, and perhaps death. Against that dramatic landscape, the “same old work” and “same dull daily weather” represent ordinary existence. The poem therefore balances transcendence against routine, joy against loss, and love against separation.

Its final image—the speaker offering their own life as a bridge—is the culmination of those contrasts. Separation becomes sacrifice, and the impossibility of continuing together becomes an opportunity for one person to help the other continue onward.

About the Poet

Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City on January 24, 1862, into a wealthy family belonging to the upper levels of New York society. Although women of her social position were generally expected to concentrate on marriage and society rather than intellectual or artistic achievement, Wharton developed into one of the most important American writers of her generation.

Wharton wrote prolifically across numerous genres, including novels, short stories, poetry, travel writing, and works on architecture, gardens, and interior design. Among her best-known works are The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920). Her fiction frequently examines the conflict between individual desire and the social conventions that restrict it—a tension that can also be felt strongly in “A Meeting.”

In 1921, The Age of Innocence received the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, making Wharton the first woman to receive that award. The novel portrays the tightly controlled world of upper-class New York society in the 1870s and the conflict between personal desire and social expectation.

Wharton spent much of her later life in France. During World War I, she devoted considerable effort to humanitarian work, establishing aid programs for refugees and others affected by the war; France awarded her the Legion of Honor in 1916 for her wartime work. She continued writing and traveling until her death in France on August 11, 1937, at the age of seventy-five.

Although her novels remain her most famous works, poems such as “A Meeting” reveal Wharton’s ability to compress themes that occupied her throughout her career—love, longing, social constraint, sacrifice, and the painful distance between what the heart desires and what circumstances allow—into just a handful of lines.

The Human Seasons

By John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

About the Poem

Today is the first full day of autumn, and there is something appropriate about marking the change of seasons with John Keats’s “The Human Seasons.” Keats begins with the familiar cycle of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but quickly turns from the natural world to ourselves: “There are four seasons in the mind of man.”

Spring belongs to youth, discovery, and possibility. Keats calls it our “lusty Spring,” when the world seems filled with beauty and we eagerly take it all in. Everything is new, or at least has the possibility of being new. There are people to meet, places to go, things to learn, and experiences still waiting for us.

Summer brings a different kind of pleasure. We begin to savor what spring gave us. Keats describes someone lingering over the “honied cud of youthful thought,” ruminating on dreams, memories, hopes, and experiences. If spring is about discovering beauty, summer is about appreciating it. There is still ambition and desire, but there is also the pleasure of knowing enough about life to recognize just how precious some of its moments are.

Then comes autumn.

Keats’s autumn is quieter. The wings that once carried us eagerly toward everything the world offered are folded close. There is a growing contentment simply to observe. We no longer have to chase every beautiful thing that passes before us. Some things can simply be allowed to pass “unheeded as a threshold brook.”

I think there is something wonderfully peaceful about that image.

We often talk about aging as if it were primarily a process of losing things: youth, beauty, strength, opportunities, time. Keats suggests another possibility. Perhaps we also gain something—the ability to be still. We become more selective about what deserves our attention and energy. We learn that not every opportunity must be pursued, not every argument must be won, and not every beautiful thing must be possessed to be appreciated.

And eventually there is winter. Keats does not romanticize it. He calls it a season of “pale misfeature.” Yet he also recognizes that winter belongs to us just as surely as spring does. Without it, we would “forego” our mortal nature.

That final thought gives the poem much of its power. We cannot choose only the seasons we like. A life made entirely of spring would hardly be a human life at all. We experience beginnings and endings, desire and contentment, joy and sorrow, growth and decline. Each belongs to the same cycle.

Perhaps we do not move through these seasons only once, either. Even later in life, there can be unexpected springs—a new friendship, a new love, a new interest, a new adventure. There can be summers when we savor happiness, autumns when we turn inward, and winters when life seems cold and barren. Sometimes all four seem to exist within us at once.

The seasons remind us that nothing remains exactly as it is. That can be frightening when things are good, but comforting when they are not. Winter does not erase the spring that came before it, and autumn does not make summer meaningless. Each season becomes part of the whole.

Maybe that is one of the gifts of autumn. As the days shorten and the leaves begin to change, the world reminds us that change can possess its own kind of beauty. We do not always have to mourn what has passed or fear what comes next. Sometimes we can simply fold our wings close, watch the mist drift by, and appreciate the season we are in.

“The Human Seasons” is a sonnet written by John Keats in 1818. Rather than describing the literal progression of the seasons, Keats uses spring, summer, autumn, and winter as metaphors for changing states of the human mind and stages of human existence.

Spring represents youthful vitality, imagination, desire, and openness to beauty. Summer is a time of contemplation, when the mind savors and reflects upon the experiences and dreams of youth. Autumn brings quietness and contentment, a willingness to withdraw somewhat from the constant pursuit of experience. Winter represents decline and mortality, the unavoidable final season that makes the cycle distinctly human.

Keats compresses an entire lifetime into fourteen lines. Yet the poem is not simply about growing old. Its opening speaks of “seasons in the mind of man,” suggesting psychological and emotional cycles as much as chronological stages. Human beings continually experience periods of awakening, fulfillment, contemplation, and loss.

The poem also reflects Keats’s enduring fascination with beauty, transience, and mortality—the knowledge that beauty is precious partly because neither beauty nor those who perceive it can last forever.

About the Poet

John Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795, and became one of the major poets of the second generation of English Romanticism. Although he originally trained in medicine, Keats abandoned a medical career to devote himself to poetry.

His poetic career was remarkably brief. Much of the work for which he is remembered was written during only a few extraordinarily productive years. His best-known poems include “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “To Autumn,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” and the sonnet “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art.”

Beauty, imagination, nature, love, transience, and mortality recur throughout Keats’s poetry. Those subjects became particularly poignant in light of his own short life. After developing tuberculosis, Keats traveled to Italy in hopes that the warmer climate would improve his health. He died in Rome on February 23, 1821, at only twenty-five years old.

Keats never reached the autumn or winter of life that he imagined in “The Human Seasons.” Yet perhaps that makes the poem even more affecting. A young poet, still very much within his own spring, could already imagine the entire cycle of human existence and recognize that mortality is not separate from life but an essential part of what gives life—and each of its seasons—meaning.

[This is my letter to the World]

By Emily Dickinson

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me

About the Poem

“This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me—” may be one of the most quietly heartbreaking openings in poetry. Emily Dickinson presents her poem as a letter sent to a world that has never answered her. She writes anyway, knowing that her words will be entrusted to “Hands I cannot see”—future readers whose reactions she cannot predict or control.

On its surface, the poem concerns Dickinson’s relationship with Nature. Nature has shared something with her, and she has attempted to communicate that message through her poetry. Yet Dickinson never explains precisely what this “simple News” might be. Perhaps it cannot be explained directly. It must be felt through the natural world and translated through poetry.

However, the poem can also be read more personally. Dickinson speaks as someone who feels separated from the larger world—someone who possesses an inner truth that others have neither acknowledged nor attempted to understand. She can send her message outward, but she cannot make the world respond. All she can do is ask those who eventually receive it to “Judge tenderly—of Me.”

That plea may feel especially familiar to LGBTQ+ readers. For much of history, our stories have been written for a world that did not write back—or, when it did respond, answered with condemnation. People concealed their love in letters, poems, diaries, and carefully chosen words because speaking plainly could cost them their families, their reputations, their freedom, or even their lives. They entrusted their truth to “Hands” they could not see, hoping that someone in another place or another time might finally understand.

The poem does not explicitly describe romantic love between women. The “Her” Dickinson loves is most directly Nature, which she personifies as feminine. Nevertheless, knowing that Dickinson wrote passionate and intimate letters to her friend and sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson gives the poem additional resonance. Dickinson understood what it meant to place intense feeling into words and send those words toward someone she loved. Whether her relationship with Susan was romantic, sexual, or something that does not fit neatly into our modern categories remains debated, but the depth of that attachment is difficult to dismiss.

A queer reading, therefore, does not require us to claim that the poem is secretly addressed to a female lover. Instead, we can recognize something profoundly queer in its emotional situation: a private self reaching toward an indifferent world, carrying a message of love and asking not merely to be heard, but to be treated gently.

“Judge tenderly—of Me” is not an apology. Dickinson does not ask permission to love Nature, to write poetry, or to see the world differently. She asks only that those who receive her message resist the impulse to condemn what they may not fully understand.

Perhaps that is the most enduring “News” this little poem carries. We may never completely know another person’s heart, but we can choose tenderness over judgment. For LGBTQ+ people—and for anyone who has ever felt unseen—that choice can make all the difference.

“This is my letter to the World” is believed to have been written around 1862 or 1863, during one of the most productive periods of Emily Dickinson’s life. Like nearly all her poems, it was originally untitled; its first line is now used as its title. It is commonly identified as poem 441 in Thomas H. Johnson’s edition of Dickinson’s poetry and poem 519 in R. W. Franklin’s later edition.

In only eight lines, Dickinson explores isolation, artistic creation, nature, posterity, and the vulnerability of placing one’s words before unknown readers. Her characteristic dashes interrupt the poem’s rhythm, allowing certain words and ideas to linger. The final request—“Judge tenderly—of Me”—turns the poem from a declaration into an intimate appeal for compassion.

The poem was not published until after Dickinson’s death. Like the “Hands” she imagined but could not see, generations of readers have received her message and interpreted it through their own experiences.

About the Poet

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She spent most of her life at her family’s home, the Homestead, and became increasingly private as she grew older. Although she wrote nearly 1,800 poems, only a small number appeared in print during her lifetime, often altered by editors to conform to conventional punctuation, capitalization, and rhyme.

Dickinson maintained several important relationships through letters, but none has inspired more interest than her bond with Susan Gilbert Dickinson, a childhood friend who later married Dickinson’s brother Austin and lived next door at the Evergreens. Emily sent Susan hundreds of poems and letters containing language that was sometimes passionate, intimate, and erotic. Scholars continue to debate the precise nature of their relationship, but Susan was unquestionably one of Dickinson’s most important emotional and literary companions.

Dickinson died on May 15, 1886, at the age of fifty-five. After her death, her younger sister Lavinia discovered the hundreds of poems Dickinson had carefully preserved. The world that had never written to her finally received her letter—and it has been reading it ever since.

The Cocoon

By Robert Frost

As far as I can see this autumn haze
That spreading in the evening air both ways,
Makes the new moon look anything but new,
And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue,
Is all the smoke from one poor house alone
With but one chimney it can call its own;
So close it will not light an early light,
Keeping its life so close and out of sight
No one for hours has set a foot outdoors
So much as to take care of evening chores.
The inmates may be lonely women-folk.
I want to tell them that with all this smoke
They prudently are spinning their cocoon
And anchoring it to an earth and moon
From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,—
Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it.

About the Poem

There is a difference between loneliness and solitude, though from the outside they can look very much the same. Frost’s speaker sees a small, isolated house at dusk. No lamp has been lit, no one has come outside, and even the evening chores appear to have been neglected. He imagines that the people inside—perhaps “lonely women-folk”—have withdrawn from the world.

Yet the chimney tells another story. The house may be quiet and its inhabitants hidden, but there is a fire burning within. Its smoke does not simply rise and disappear; it spreads across the evening sky, softening the new moon and filling the meadow with blue. Something produced by one poor and seemingly insignificant house transforms the entire landscape.

That image changes the meaning of the house’s isolation. The people within are not merely shutting themselves away. Without realizing it, they are “spinning their cocoon,” creating a place of warmth and protection against the winter soon to come. The cocoon is delicate, but Frost imagines it anchored to both earth and moon so securely that no winter gale can carry it away.

We often speak of withdrawing into ourselves as though it were always unhealthy. Sometimes it is. Loneliness can become its own kind of winter, especially when we feel forgotten or disconnected from the lives continuing beyond our walls. However, there are also times when retreat is necessary. We need places where we can close the door, kindle a fire, and shelter ourselves from what is cold and exhausting outside.

A cocoon is not merely a hiding place. It is where a living thing protects itself while undergoing a transformation. From the outside, nothing may appear to be happening. Inside, however, life is quietly preparing for what comes next. Rest and solitude are not always signs that we have stopped living; sometimes they are how we gather the strength to begin again.

Perhaps the most comforting part of the poem is that the people inside the house do not realize what they have created. “Did they but know it,” Frost writes. We may not always recognize the warmth, safety, and resilience of the small life we have built for ourselves. We may see only four walls and feel that the world has passed us by. Someone looking from a distance, however, might see our chimney smoke spreading across the sky—a quiet sign that there is still warmth within us and that our small lives touch more of the world than we know.

“The Cocoon” is composed of sixteen lines arranged in eight rhyming couplets. Frost’s steady meter and paired rhymes give the poem a feeling of enclosure: each line is joined to another, much as the house and its inhabitants are wrapped within the cocoon of smoke.

The poem also gradually expands its scale. It begins with an autumn haze spread across the evening sky, then traces that haze back to the chimney of a single house. Having narrowed our attention from the sky to the home, Frost expands the image once more. The smoke connects this otherwise isolated dwelling to the meadow, the earth, and even the moon. What initially appears small and lonely becomes part of something immense.

The cocoon metaphor also contains a subtle promise. Winter is approaching, but a cocoon suggests that winter will not last forever. Within its shelter lies the possibility of survival, transformation, and eventual emergence.

“The Cocoon” was first published in The New Republic in February 1927 and later included in Frost’s 1928 collection West-Running Brook.

About the Poet

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. Following his father’s death in 1885, Frost moved with his mother and sister to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Although born in California, he became closely associated with rural New England, whose farms, forests, villages, and changing seasons provided the settings for much of his poetry.

Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard University but did not earn a degree. Over the years, he worked as a teacher, farmer, cobbler, and newspaper editor while continuing to write poetry. In 1912, he moved with his family to England, where his first two collections, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, were published. By the time he returned to the United States in 1915, he had established the literary reputation that would make him one of America’s best-known poets.

Although Frost often used traditional meter, rhyme, rural settings, and conversational language, his poems are rarely as simple or comforting as they first appear. Beneath their familiar landscapes are questions about isolation, grief, human relationships, mortality, and our uncertain place in the natural world. He received four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry and served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959. Frost lived and taught for many years in both Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston on January 29, 1963.