Tag Archives: Birches

Dante’s Version of Heaven on Earth

By Robin Bates | Published: November 11, 2023

In talking to Solomon in Paradiso, Dante gets a new vision of heaven on earth.

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The Ice Storm Cometh

By Robin Bates | Published: February 15, 2021

We’re currently undergoing a potentially severe ice storm. Here’s what Robert Frost has to say about ice storms.

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Ensnar’d with Flow’rs I Fall on Grass

By Robin Bates | Published: August 1, 2019

Friday I found utterly dispiriting this past week’s Democratic debates in which candidates lasered in on tiny differences while a fire rages all around us. I haven’t wanted to relax my vigilance regarding Donald Trump since autocrats win when we become so worn down that we stop paying attention. Nevertheless, these two wretched debates made […]

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Burdened by Ice

By Robin Bates | Published: January 26, 2019

Spiritual Sunday With much of the country groaning under the weight of winter storms, I share a Robert Hayden poem in which the speaker calls out to God in his misery. I warn you the poem does not conclude with a comforting—or a facile—promise. Sounding very much like George Herbert in his inability to pray, […]

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Growing More Liberal as We Age

By Robin Bates | Published: January 31, 2012

Frost may allude to the belief that we become more conservative as we age, but his own poetry refutes the claim.

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Mending Walls Can Save Lives

By Robin Bates | Published: June 2, 2010

Robert Frost’s poems (as indicated by “Mending Wall,” which I wrote on yesterday) have the wonderful ability to move from the very specific to the universal.  One begins with a small incident (two neighbors fixing a stone wall) and, before one knows it, one is thinking deeply about the world–barriers between people, roads not taken, […]

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Earth, Love, Birches, and Ice Storms

By Robin Bates | Published: February 11, 2010

I promised this post on Robert Frost’s “Birches” in the event that we have an ice storm.  I don’t know yet whether we will have one, but we had frozen rain for much of the night, and as I write this (Wednesday morning) we are being attacked by a blizzard.  So if I don’t arrange […]

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