Robert Frost and Cultural Confidence

Trial by Existence

Have you ever wondered, why the same people who are pushing hardest for the greenie de-industrialization plan, are also the ones who are pushing hardest for the war mobilization plan? Well, it seems that the thing that these two plans seem to have in common, is that they both will kill people, and these plans seem to be motivated by a dislike, or even hatred, of people.

Now, wouldn’t it be better for us, to somehow change our culture away from a hatred of people, and towards a love of mankind. So, let’s use one of Robert Frost’s poems to help to change the way that we think of each other.

‘The Trial by Existence’, by Robert Frost is one of my most favorite of his poems. It’s a poem or a story, or maybe it’s a dream, that is told that, although we can’t quite clearly remember, we keep among our innermost dreams, a partial glimpse of an idea - an idea that tells us that we are all here on earth, because we chose to be here.

We freely chose to leave the flowery fields of paradise, and to be one of those brave souls who answered God’s call for volunteers to return on earth - to do good. And even though, in doing so, we would lose all of our fond memories of heaven, all of us nonetheless made that joyful fateful decision.

And none of our troubles and woes should ever discourage us from feeling the happiness of having made that choice to be alive, and to dream - while we can only pity those who rue their choice.

The Trial by Existence

Even the bravest that are slain

     Shall not dissemble their surprise

On waking to find valor reign,

     Even as on earth, in paradise;

And where they sought without the sword

     Wide field of asphodel fore’er,

To find that the utmost reward

     Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white

     And is not shattered into dyes,

The light for ever is morning light;

     The hills are verdured pasture-wise;

The angel hosts with freshness go,

    And seek with laughter what to brave;—

And binding all is the hushed snow

     Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed

     The gathering of the souls for birth,

The trial by existence named,

     The obscuration upon earth.

And the slant spirits trooping by

     In streams and cross- and counter-streams

Can but give ear to that sweet cry

     For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned

     To view once more the sacrifice

Of those who for some good discerned

     Will gladly give up paradise.

And a white shimmering concourse rolls

     Toward the throne to witness there

The speeding of devoted souls

     Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,

     Having first heard the life read out

That opens earthward, good and ill,

     Beyond the shadow of a doubt;

And very beautifully God limns,

     And tenderly, life’s little dream,

But naught extenuates or dims,

     Setting the thing that is supreme.

Nor is there wanting in the press

     Some spirit to stand simply forth,

Heroic in its nakedness,

     Against the uttermost of earth.

The tale of earth’s unhonored things

     Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;

And the mind whirls and the heart sings,

     And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:

     ‘One thought in agony of strife

The bravest would have by for friend,

     The memory that he chose the life;

But the pure fate to which you go

     Admits no memory of choice,

Or the woe were not earthly woe

     To which you give the assenting voice.’

And so the choice must be again,

     But the last choice is still the same;

And the awe passes wonder then,

     And a hush falls for all acclaim.

And God has taken a flower of gold

     And broken it, and used therefrom

The mystic link to bind and hold

     Spirit to matter till death come.

’Tis of the essence of life here,

     Though we choose greatly, still to lack

The lasting memory at all clear,

     That life has for us on the wrack

Nothing but what we somehow chose;

     Thus are we wholly stripped of pride

In the pain that has but one close,

     Bearing it crushed and mystified.

It’s a nice story, or maybe it’s a nice dream, about our ‘mystic link’. Because all we really have is this ‘mystic link’ between spirit and matter, that we call life. But it’s a ‘mystic link’ that we can dream about! Because, I suppose, that we don’t dream in heaven, since there’s no need to, if we’re in heaven. (I’ll have to ask my friend, David Gosselin, about that.)

And perhaps, anew, we might again choose to live, to dream, and to have fun.

[next - Robert Frost and the Mending Wall]