They Were Welcome to Their Belief
They Were Welcome to Their Belief - fact Summary
Appeared in a Witness Tree
This brief lyric addresses aging and mistaken causes. The speaker observes that grief and care think themselves responsible for a man’s apparent decline, but Frost insists the whiteness of his hair comes from a lifetime of literal snow clinging to the low roof over his bed. The recurring refrain undercuts common metaphors that equate sorrow with visible aging, offering a wry, unsentimental correction: external, physical accumulation — not inward emotion — produced the one white hair. The poem quietly separates appearance from assumed moral or psychological causes.
Read Complete AnalysesGrief may have thought it was grief. Care may have thought it was care. They were welcome to their belief, The overimportant pair. No, it took all the snows that clung To the low roof over his bed, Beginning when he was young, To induce the one snow on his head. But whenever the roof camme white The head in the dark below Was a shade less the color of night, A shade more the color of snow. Grief may have thought it was grief. Care may have thought it was care. But neither one was the thief Of his raven color of hair.
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