Rose Pogonias
Rose Pogonias - context Summary
Published in 1915
Published in Frost’s early collection, this short pastoral recalls a sunlit, flower-filled hollow where speakers revere heat and gather orchises. The scene is small and enclosed, experienced as a kind of temple whose worship is the picking of blossoms and a simple prayer that the spot be spared the haymower. Frost frames ordinary rural action as near-sacred, preserving a youthful, communal desire to protect a moment of beauty against practical labor. The tone is nostalgic and reverent rather than elegiac.
Read Complete AnalysesA saturated meadow, Sun-shaped and jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider Than the trees around were tall; Where winds were quite excluded, And the air was stifling sweet With the breath of many flowers, — A temple of the heat. There we bowed us in the burning, As the sun’s right worship is, To pick where none could miss them A thousand orchises; For though the grass was scattered, yet every second spear Seemed tipped with wings of color, That tinged the atmosphere. We raised a simple prayer Before we left the spot, That in the general mowing That place might be forgot; Or if not all so favored, Obtain such grace of hours, that none should mow the grass there While so confused with flowers.
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