Frost's A Prayer in Spring
The Joy of Simple Gratitude and Love
The poem, “A Prayer in Spring,” features four stanzas, each consisting of two rimed couplets. As he prays to the Divine Creator, the speaker is also imploring his listeners to take as much delight in “the springing of the year” as in the resultant harvest that occurs two seasons away in autumn.
First Stanza: “Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day”
Addressing the All-Mighty, the speaker requests that he and his neighbors be granted to ability and foresight to enjoy the current season’s offerings. He asks that they may take “pleasure in the flowers to-day.” In addition, he asks that they not put their minds on the “uncertain harvest.”
Farmers as they begin their spring cultivation would naturally be thinking of the ripe fruit and its resulting rewards of food and money. But the speaker wants them to stop and enjoy the season of planting and tending, the season of new-birth, even as they begin and continue their work that will produce the harvest.
He emphasizes the necessity of living in the moment by rightly calling it “the uncertain harvest.” By looking so far ahead and not appreciating the beauty of the current moment, the individual not only loses that current moment but also may be disappointed by that future harvest, if it fails to produce enough quality fruit.
Second Stanza: “Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white”
The speaker then portrays the objects of spring that should bring pleasure as they occur: “the orchard white” denotes the budding blooms that will eventually become the fruit they will pick in fall, but the speaker wants his listeners to observe their beauty now and enjoy them, even at night when they resemble “ghosts.”
He also asks that he and his fellows may be able to be “happy in the happy bees” that buzz the blossoms in the orchards. He asks the Divine to endow his fellows with these attitudes, attitudes that he probably seldom sees.
Third Stanza: “And make us happy in the darting bird”
The speaker prays that they may be “happy in the darting bird,” a humming bird that resembles a “meteor” as it “thrusts in with needle bill, / And off a blossom in mid air stands still.” The speaker has experienced enchantment in such sights, and now he is supplicating to the Divine that his friends, neighbors, and relatives be able to discover pleasure and joy in these natural springtime delights.
Fourth Stanza: “For this is love and nothing else is love”
In the final stanza, the speaker offers his reasoning in asking the Divine to touch the hearts and minds of his fellows: he believes, “this is love and nothing else is love.” The speaker believes that so many things in life are incomprehensible to the human mind and heart and, therefore, must be left to God.
But these simple pleasures are here for the taking; they offer enjoyment at no cost to anyone. All the individual has to do is observe, feel the joy, and love.
Robert Frost
|
More in Reading & Literature
Latest Articles