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Unread 03-20-2015, 10:28 AM
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Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Frost's "For Once, Then, Something" is my go-to model for hendecasyllables. It's summer and not spring in this poem, but hey, I'll take it.


For Once, Then, Something
By Robert Frost

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.
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