Catherine has a point about Frost, though there is perhaps as much in another poem, "The Bonfire," that Wilbur could be seen to have been responding to: a fear far more boldly encountered than that to be found in "Hyla Brook"; a willful drive to "scare ourselves" so that what may or will come later (war, or death) will not be so frightful ("To philosophize is to learn how to die"); and (from the perspective of the neighbors who walk past the blackened tract) the unseen hand of the bonfire-maker. If it's on target, none of this obviates Mark's point about the "objective tree," which fits in so well with Wilbur's thought...
In Baer's Fourteen on Form, responding to a question about "On Having Mis-identified a Wild Flower," Wilbur mentions having read a book by Jonathan Bishop, "in which he talked about the pleasure of being wrong" (and here lies a fortuitous "line break" at the margin) "about some natural thing, and then finding out what the right answer is." Being wrong, in public, about a poem, it seems to me, is never brushed with pleasure...
Doug
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