Storm Fear

Weather Underground: Westport, Massachusetts Forecast

So a blizzard is on the way and every time I see such a storm approaching my thoughts drift back to what it must have been like - still is in some places - to face such a blizzard when you were a small family in an isolated New England farm house - and that, of course leads to one of the early poems of Robert Frost, "Storm Fear," written in 1913.

STORM FEAR

by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
'Come out! Come out!'--
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,--
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.

Posted by Greg Stone at January 22, 2005 03:31 PM