+ Timeless Thursdays: A Cabin in the Clearing +

This is perhaps one of Robert Frost's poems that can always pop into my head at almost any moment. Ever since I first read it... it always seems to call to me at random moments and demand my attention. Which is weird because it's one of the works that's harder to find. I have several compilations of Frost's works and none of them contain it.

A Cabin in the Clearing

MIST
I don't believe the sleepers in this house know where they are.

SMOKE
They've been here long enough
To push the woods back from around the house
And part them in the middle with a path.

MIST
And still I doubt if they know where they are
And I begin to fear they never will.
All they maintain the path for is the comfort
Of visiting with the equally bewildered.
Nearer in plight their neighbors are than distant.

SMOKE
I am the guardian wraith of starlit smoke
That leans out this and that way from their chimney.
I will not have theIr happiness despaired of.

MIST
No one -not I- would give them up for lost
Simply because they don't know where they are.
I am the damper counterpart of smoke
The gives off from a garden grows.
I cotton to their landscape. That's who I am.
I am no further from their fate than you are.

SMOKE
They must by now have learned the native tongue.
Why don't they ask the Red Man where they are?

MIST
They often do and none the wiser for it.
So do they also ask the philosophers
Who come to look in on them from the pulpit.
They will ask anyone there is to ask-
In the fond faith accumulated fact
Will of itself take fire and light the world up.
Learning has been a part of their religion.

SMOKE
The day ever comes when they know who
They are, they may know better where they are.
But who they are is too much to believe-
Either for them or the onlooking work.
They are too sudden to be incredible.

MIST
Listen, they murmur talking in the dark
On what should be their daylong theme continued.
Putting the lamp out has not put their thought out.
Let us pretend the dewdrops from the eaves
Are you and I eavesdropping on their unrest-

A mist and smoke eavesdropping on a haze-
And see if we can tell the bass from the soprano.

Than smoke and mist who better could appraise
The kindred spirit of an inner haze.