Too Anxious for Rivers by Robert Frost REVIEW
“Too Anxious for Rivers" reminds me of a number of Robert Frost poems. It deals with the mystery of where we all came from (like “The Woodpile”) and where it could all be going (like “After Apple Picking”). In “The Woodpile” Frost finds a cord of stacked wood in the swamp decaying and wonders where it came from. In “After Apple Picking” Frost wonders if the final sleep is a short one or a long one. Here in “Too Anxious for Rivers” Frost is looking at a torrential river and noticing that its origin is only hearsay and its destination is beyond the scope of his vision.
Look down the long valley and there stands a mountain
That someone has said is the end of the world.
Then what of this river that having arisen
Must find where to pour itself into and empty?
The deficiencies of Frost’s vision into the past and the future is compensated by an overabundance of observation about what is in front of him. Where life comes from may be a legend. Where it may be going may be a mystery, but life is certainly going on all around us with a vengeance.
“I never saw so much swift water run cloudless.”
In other words, there is a lot of life in the world, all apparently without a cause (river is raging’ not a cloud in the sky). And here is where Frost’s poetic eye shifts from the outward to the inward and he reflects on things internal.
“Oh, I have been often too anxious for rivers
To leave it to them to get out of their valleys.
The truth is the river flows into the canyon
Of Ceasing-to Question-What-Doesn’t-Concern-Us,
As sooner or later we have to cease somewhere.
No place to get lost like too far in the distance.
It may be a mercy the dark closes round us
So broodingly soon in every direction.
“Perhaps these questions without answers are not worth stressing over,” Frost seems to be saying. “There must have been a beginning. There must be an ending. Maybe we do not need to know anything else and it is a mercy to us that we do not know?" This launches the poem into a comparison between scientific ways of knowing and mystical ways of knowing.
The world as we know is an elephant’s howdah;
The elephant stands on the back of a turtle;
The turtle in turn on a rock in the ocean.
And how much longer a story has science
Before she must put out the light on the children
And tell them the rest of the story is dreaming?
‘You children may dream it and tell it tomorrow.’
Whether you are a mythology teacher or an astrophysics teacher or a philosophy teacher, in the end, you have as much assurance about these things as a child’s dream can give. Maybe, Frost suggests, the ancient philosophers were right. Maybe we once knew the answers to these questions of
“woods, lovely, dark, and deep” and have to wait to remember.
Time was we were molten, time was we were vapor.
What set us on fire and what set us revolving,
Lucretius the Epicurean might tell us
‘Twas something we knew all about to begin with
And needn’t have fared into space like his master
To find ‘twas the effort, the essay of love.
Frost concludes his poem with veiled agnosticism combined with a hint at what his own hope is. Maybe the Roman writer Lucretius’ theory will suffice in the absence of ocular proof? Maybe life is here because of some combination of actualized intention and articulate affection – what folks in my theological camp would call, “intelligent design”?
There is a song by Iris Dement entitled “Let the Mystery Be” that captures what I think Frost may be trying to say.
Everybody's wonderin' what and where they they all came from
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
When the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain
And so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be
Some say once you're gone you're gone forever
And some say you're gonna come back
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour
If in sinful ways you lack
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden
Bunch of carrots and little sweet peas
I think I'll just let the mystery be
Everybody's wonderin' what and where they they all came from
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
When the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain
And so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be
Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory
And I ain't saying it ain't a fact
But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory
And I don't like the sound of that
I believe in love and I live my life accordingly
But I choose to let the mystery be
Everybody is wondering what and where they they all came from
Everybody is worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go
When the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain
And so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be
I think I'll just let the mystery be
Question for Comment: Do you see life as “an essay of love”? Something structured resulting from thoughtful kindness? Or is it a "tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury"?
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