The Most Of It

I've never read much poetry. Just little bits, here and there. There was one poem I came across in a college writing & composition course, however, that settled in to stay. It's called "The Most Of It" and it was written by Robert Frost. If a girl who doesn't read much poetry can rightfully claim to have a "favorite" poem, this one's mine. In fact, it made such an initial impact on me that I memorized it.

Memories are funny things. Usually content to lie still, stacked away and collecting dust, they occassionally choose to assert themselves again with the slightest provocation - even 15 years later. This particular little gem always resonates awhile when it does. I find myself reflecting, yet again, that this is the ache common to every heart - the yearning to be heard. And, perhaps even more importantly, to be answered. And I am so thankful that Jehovah is the God who hears...who answers. Who knows, and delights to be known.

The Most Of It

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake

Was but the mocking echo of his own

From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake

Some morning from the boulder-broken beach

He would cry out on life, that what it wants

Is not its own love back in copy speech,

But counter-love, original response.

And nothing ever came from what he cried

Unless it was the embodiment that crashed

In the cliff's talus on the other side,

And then in the far-distant water splashed,

But after a time allowed for it to swim,

Instead of proving human when it neared

And someone else additional to him,

As a great buck it powerfully appeared,

Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,

And landed pouring like a waterfall,

And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,

And forced the underbrush - and that was all.

~by Robert Frost