Spring Pools

by ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods—
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

Frost’s career as a teacher extended from the spring of 1893 almost to his death in 1963. It included teaching in a one-room country school in New England and in the most complex and prestigious ivy-covered gothic-structured colleges and universities. from Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher by Peter Stanlis, Intercollegiate Studies Institute (2007)>

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