Robert Frost (1874-1963)
For once, then Something
1Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
2Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
3Deeper down in the well than where the water
4Gives me back in a shining surface picture
5Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
6Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
7Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
8I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
9Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
10Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
11Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
12One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
13Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
14Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
15Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Robert Frost, New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1923), p. 88. D-11 0397 Fisher Library.
First publication date:
1923
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/1/16*1:2003/11/20
Rhyme: unrhyming
Other poems by Robert Frost
