Bugs & the Venture of Eternity
In "To a Moth Seen in Winter"
In "To a Moth Seen in Winter"
Bugs are fun! Is it any wonder that one of my favorite poets has several poems or reflections on moths? (I say this with a bit of hesitation, as yes, I have so often been inspired by Frost poetry, even have written a few songs on the piano dedicated to his verse, however, it would seem that he may not have been a person whom I would have admired, also, in this phase of my life I find that I cannot give voice to some of the more hopeless tones with which some poems are overlay-ed.) What I enjoy when I read Frost's To a Moth Seen in Winter, is encountering the moth in the snow.... it's a breathless moment, it's so exciting! Insects- are they not a source of joy & endless fascination? It's so momentous to see this magical silvery creature that I wonder if I can follow Frost into his melancholic reverie, but I do, because he is such a master of words, after all, it's difficult not to follow Frost where he will take you, whether into a yellow wood, a snowy evening, or into pensive reflection "twixt wood and wood." If I see a moth or any insect for that matter, I too am bound to stop what I am doing and watch with fascination, delight, and at least a hint of melancholic reverie...So to prepare us
for Frost.. .
Here's a little of us enjoying nature from our home in Wisconsin. It's a bit buggy out here by the lake. Our friends are ....
katydids,
grasshoppers,
walking sticks,
bumblebees, and
praying mantises
and well, wasps, especially recently~ everyday as winter approaches we have about 8 cold and dying wasps come into our house, looking for warmth: guess we need to go nest hunting & destroying, they are very slow, drunken-like, docile and lost~moral of the story, when you see a wasp nest on you house-never leave it-or you'll have trouble in the fall and in the spring when they wake up! Back to Frost's moth....
for Frost.. .
Here's a little of us enjoying nature from our home in Wisconsin. It's a bit buggy out here by the lake. Our friends are ....
 |
| Katydids come into our house and make high shrilled clicking noises. Can you spy her on the leaf? |
katydids,
grasshoppers,
walking sticks,
 | |
| Mating sticks. Do Walking Sticks kiss? Note how the tail of one looks like a long needled pine. Wait, females do not need males to reproduce, they can reproduce by parthenogenesis...hmmm. |
bumblebees, and
 |
| This one flew at my nose as I was videotaping it! |
praying mantises
 |
| This one was just sitting on our car. |
and well, wasps, especially recently~ everyday as winter approaches we have about 8 cold and dying wasps come into our house, looking for warmth: guess we need to go nest hunting & destroying, they are very slow, drunken-like, docile and lost~moral of the story, when you see a wasp nest on you house-never leave it-or you'll have trouble in the fall and in the spring when they wake up! Back to Frost's moth....
 |
| "bright- black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown..." |
To a Moth Seen in Winter
Robert Frost
There's first a gloveless hand warm from my pocket,
A perch and resting place 'twixt wood and wood,
Bright-black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown,
The wings not folded in repose, but spread.
(Who would you be, I wonder, by those marks
If I had moths to friend as I have flowers?)
And now pray tell what lured you with false hope
To make the venture of eternity
And seek the love of kind in winter time?
But stay and hear me out. I surely think
You make a labor of flight for one so airy,
Spending yourself too much in self-support.
Nor will you find love either nor love you.
And what I pity in you is something human,
The old incurable untimeliness,
Only begetter of all ills that are.
But go. You are right. My pity cannot help.
Go till you wet your pinions and are quenched.
You must be made more simply wise than I
To know the hand I stretch impulsively
Across the gulf of well nigh everything
May reach to you, but cannot touch your fate.
I cannot touch your life, much less can save,
Who am tasked to save my own a little while.
Beautiful and melancholy. Indeed, Frost is too melancholy for me, at least that's how I seem to feel with all of my favorite Frost poems, terrifyingly melancholy and so...heavy with the tragic side of human existence. One commentator labeled Frost "the bearer of bad news for civilization." And in this, perhaps he provides an intellectual honesty different from his transcendentalist contemporaries. Despite his intellectually honest melancholy, he draws us in with nature's beauty, this snow-shaking beauty like the the irresistible heavy dust-fall of snow from a giant, long-needled pine, or a "black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown," that we must marvel at nature with him. Like a stereogram, now you see it, now you don't, there is childlike marvel at nature {wondering which kind of friend this moth might be} coupled with a heavy adult reverie {you will never truly be loved, nor will you love}: but this moth, irresistible form of natural wonder just happened upon, gives delight despite the wistfulness of the observer, like a newborn infant, who knows not the effect of pure delight and joy she gives. The moth is a remnant of the pre-wistful garden of Eden.
But Frost cannot live in the Garden of Eden anymore than you or I can. Oh, Frost, here you spend less than half of your poem in your childlike delight over a moth on your hand! Yet, I could give you the benefit of the doubt and see perhaps a bit of childlike innocence in your reverie, thinking it possible that you were enjoying your reverie and your anthropomorphic musings with childish delight. Ah, but there can be an earth-spell delight in melancholy, so I can assume that the delight even in choosing the right word goes all the way down to the bottom of the poem. It was all part of the earth-spell the moth had put you under and the word-smith came out to play, in the garden of the knowledge of good and evil. In this garden we became barred from lifting ourselves out of this burdensome wistful knowledge that we cannot change our fate. In this garden we had no choice but to hide from the One that loved us into being and to accept our fate; no choice but to lament something good that is missed, something that could have been better, if only. But, if Frost had been able to accept through a childlike faith, even way back in the first appearance of this heavy knowledge in the Genesis story came a promise that through Christ the head of evil would be crushed. The whole story is the story that includes ills & tragedies, but that ultimately has a hero who wins the battle & destroys evil~and gives us God's vision for what love was meant to be, even giving us His perfect love in Christ, that our sufferings in the face of imperfect human love might not have the final voice. Thus, a vision for eternity with God restored.
The poem is but a vein of the moth wing, not the whole, I can't see it all here in this poem. To stop here would be like stopping by the Snow Witch's castle in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and seeing all those creatures frozen stone cold: indeed, Frost seems frozen in this poem, able to enjoy a beautiful moment in nature, but unable to find true love despite his best desires and efforts. If we stop here, trying to find true & unconditional love in nature, or even in ourselves or another, we will find ourselves coming up short. Indeed, Frost speaks truth. This truth is confirmed in God's word. Man on His own cannot experience unconditional love on his "venture of eternity." That is why we can find ourselves spending so much effort on "self-support." Frost, much like scripture, gives us this bad news; here Frost betrays the transcendentalists- there are things in nature and in humanity that are not inherently good. We cannot find the support that we need, and we end up spending so much time in "self-support" trying to "save ourselves." It is only through God's inspired story that we see that Frost's incurable "winter" is melting just like Aslan's breath set free the frozen statues; to see the fate of God's people reborn and to find unconditional love to us and for us in the expression of Jesus.
Because of God's gift of undconditional love, bugs can take us out of our adult heaviness and into a world full of childlike possibility and fascination, into suspended moments detached from responsibility, full of the delight of being and the intrigue & strangeness of design. Through Christ, God's favor can be upon us just as on a little insect, who goes about a pretty simple business of living, despite our "incurable untimeliness,\only begetter of all ills that are," and being a little-no- a lot repetitive. For the Lord has reached out His hand "across the gulf of well, nigh, everything," and touched our fate, yes, even redeemed it, in a "timely" manner, for He is not the begetter of evils, but the begetter of salvation! Such that we need not try to save ourselves. Lord, thank you that after you spoke the word that brought forth bug creatures, you then spoke the written words of life to lost souls that lead us ultimately to your final Word of Jesus. Your final word of Jesus won for us on the cross what nature could not, and what we could not win for ourselves, that we might be taken out of self-conscious reverie and given light moments of being because of the Word of Life who became hope in the midst of tragedy. And finally, bugs remind me of One who said that His burden ultimately is light and not heavy, because as it was said: "our earthly troubles" are light and momentary, because they are passing away, for all the children of God.
A perch and resting place 'twixt wood and wood,
Bright-black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown,
The wings not folded in repose, but spread.
(Who would you be, I wonder, by those marks
If I had moths to friend as I have flowers?)
And now pray tell what lured you with false hope
To make the venture of eternity
And seek the love of kind in winter time?
But stay and hear me out. I surely think
You make a labor of flight for one so airy,
Spending yourself too much in self-support.
Nor will you find love either nor love you.
And what I pity in you is something human,
The old incurable untimeliness,
Only begetter of all ills that are.
But go. You are right. My pity cannot help.
Go till you wet your pinions and are quenched.
You must be made more simply wise than I
To know the hand I stretch impulsively
Across the gulf of well nigh everything
May reach to you, but cannot touch your fate.
I cannot touch your life, much less can save,
Who am tasked to save my own a little while.
Beautiful and melancholy. Indeed, Frost is too melancholy for me, at least that's how I seem to feel with all of my favorite Frost poems, terrifyingly melancholy and so...heavy with the tragic side of human existence. One commentator labeled Frost "the bearer of bad news for civilization." And in this, perhaps he provides an intellectual honesty different from his transcendentalist contemporaries. Despite his intellectually honest melancholy, he draws us in with nature's beauty, this snow-shaking beauty like the the irresistible heavy dust-fall of snow from a giant, long-needled pine, or a "black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown," that we must marvel at nature with him. Like a stereogram, now you see it, now you don't, there is childlike marvel at nature {wondering which kind of friend this moth might be} coupled with a heavy adult reverie {you will never truly be loved, nor will you love}: but this moth, irresistible form of natural wonder just happened upon, gives delight despite the wistfulness of the observer, like a newborn infant, who knows not the effect of pure delight and joy she gives. The moth is a remnant of the pre-wistful garden of Eden.
But Frost cannot live in the Garden of Eden anymore than you or I can. Oh, Frost, here you spend less than half of your poem in your childlike delight over a moth on your hand! Yet, I could give you the benefit of the doubt and see perhaps a bit of childlike innocence in your reverie, thinking it possible that you were enjoying your reverie and your anthropomorphic musings with childish delight. Ah, but there can be an earth-spell delight in melancholy, so I can assume that the delight even in choosing the right word goes all the way down to the bottom of the poem. It was all part of the earth-spell the moth had put you under and the word-smith came out to play, in the garden of the knowledge of good and evil. In this garden we became barred from lifting ourselves out of this burdensome wistful knowledge that we cannot change our fate. In this garden we had no choice but to hide from the One that loved us into being and to accept our fate; no choice but to lament something good that is missed, something that could have been better, if only. But, if Frost had been able to accept through a childlike faith, even way back in the first appearance of this heavy knowledge in the Genesis story came a promise that through Christ the head of evil would be crushed. The whole story is the story that includes ills & tragedies, but that ultimately has a hero who wins the battle & destroys evil~and gives us God's vision for what love was meant to be, even giving us His perfect love in Christ, that our sufferings in the face of imperfect human love might not have the final voice. Thus, a vision for eternity with God restored.
The poem is but a vein of the moth wing, not the whole, I can't see it all here in this poem. To stop here would be like stopping by the Snow Witch's castle in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and seeing all those creatures frozen stone cold: indeed, Frost seems frozen in this poem, able to enjoy a beautiful moment in nature, but unable to find true love despite his best desires and efforts. If we stop here, trying to find true & unconditional love in nature, or even in ourselves or another, we will find ourselves coming up short. Indeed, Frost speaks truth. This truth is confirmed in God's word. Man on His own cannot experience unconditional love on his "venture of eternity." That is why we can find ourselves spending so much effort on "self-support." Frost, much like scripture, gives us this bad news; here Frost betrays the transcendentalists- there are things in nature and in humanity that are not inherently good. We cannot find the support that we need, and we end up spending so much time in "self-support" trying to "save ourselves." It is only through God's inspired story that we see that Frost's incurable "winter" is melting just like Aslan's breath set free the frozen statues; to see the fate of God's people reborn and to find unconditional love to us and for us in the expression of Jesus.
Because of God's gift of undconditional love, bugs can take us out of our adult heaviness and into a world full of childlike possibility and fascination, into suspended moments detached from responsibility, full of the delight of being and the intrigue & strangeness of design. Through Christ, God's favor can be upon us just as on a little insect, who goes about a pretty simple business of living, despite our "incurable untimeliness,\only begetter of all ills that are," and being a little-no- a lot repetitive. For the Lord has reached out His hand "across the gulf of well, nigh, everything," and touched our fate, yes, even redeemed it, in a "timely" manner, for He is not the begetter of evils, but the begetter of salvation! Such that we need not try to save ourselves. Lord, thank you that after you spoke the word that brought forth bug creatures, you then spoke the written words of life to lost souls that lead us ultimately to your final Word of Jesus. Your final word of Jesus won for us on the cross what nature could not, and what we could not win for ourselves, that we might be taken out of self-conscious reverie and given light moments of being because of the Word of Life who became hope in the midst of tragedy. And finally, bugs remind me of One who said that His burden ultimately is light and not heavy, because as it was said: "our earthly troubles" are light and momentary, because they are passing away, for all the children of God.
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