Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ACCEPTANCE, by ROBERT FROST


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ACCEPTANCE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
Last Line: Into the future. Let what will be, be
Subject(s): Death; Life Change Events; Dead, The


When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night bee too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'


The things but balls all going round in rings.
Some mighty huge, some mighty tiny,
All of them radiant and mighty shiny.

They mean to tell us all was rolling blind
Till accidentally it hit on mind
In an albino monkey in the jungle,
And even then it had to grope and bungle,

Till Darwin came to earth upon a year
To show the evolution how to steer.
They mean to tell us, though, the Omnibus
Had no real purpose until it got to us.

Never believe it. At the very worst
It must have had the purpose from the first
To produce purpose as the fitter bred:
We were just purpose coming to a head.

Whose purpose was it, His or Hers or Its?
Let's leave that to the scientific wits.
Grant me intention, purpose and design --
That's near enough for me to the divine.

And yet with all this help of head and brain,
How happily instinctive we remain.
Our best guide upward farther to the light:
Passionate preference such as love at sight.





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