A Time To Talk

“The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1845)

Written at the beginnings of the era that Frost’s generation would largely reject, this poem, by America’s national poet of the Gilded Age, presents a reassuring theme about the importance of others and how the poet ultimately finds validation for his songs in sharing them with others. Any actions we take, the poem argues, need the response and involvement of others.

“The Soul Selects Its Own Society” by Emily Dickinson (1862)

More in line with Frost’s chilling existentialist vision of a world that threatens with isolation and routine, Dickinson celebrates the strength and temerity of the soul in reaching out to someone, anyone, to lessen the burden and anxiety of facing an empty cosmos. In finding a way to another, the poem argues, the soul refuses to surrender to the evidence of its own vulnerability and alienation.

“Old Friends” by Edgar Guest (1925)

A representative voice of the genre of hospitality and friendship poems that defined both Gilded Age America and Victorian England, Guest, a staggeringly popular poet in his time all but forgotten today, here celebrates with a warmth uncomplicated by irony the simple pleasures of friends, old and new.