Robert Frost – For Once, Then, Something
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it
Water came to rebuke the too clear water
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it
Water came to rebuke the too clear water
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something
