[MacArthur]

The Pasture

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.

Like every American poet, I’ll make a confession— I dislike the poetry of Robert Frost...I detest it! It’s a deep, abiding and life-long distaste. Like feeling hungry, and eating one of the candy-canes off the Christmas-tree. I used to believe it was because he was taught in school when I was a kid— except, I like the “school” poems (relatively) better than the others.

I’ve tried. About four or five times I’ve bought or borrowed a collection, painfully attempted “close readings”, perused plenty of criticism and had it all explained to me by persons whose opinions I respect. And, I’m not one to assume that everyone’s a fool, save me.

Let’s do the poem:

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

Sing-songy, kinda? I’ll break the suspense— you wait in vain for a three-syllable word. You could go for pages through this “prosodic genius” without stumbling on one…then it would be a proper name, or an animal.
Now, everyone with an IQ over sixty will sometimes speak (still more, write) in poly-syllables...except Frost, when he’s doing “poetry”.
Frost is often compared to Shakespeare (a comparison he was fond of suggesting, himself). Shakespeare used an incredibly rich diction, and coined dozens, if not hundreds, of new expressions. Frost routinely deploys a diction that would disgrace a fifth-grader.

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

Even Golias would have a tough time with this rhyme-driven inversion. I doubt whether this is legitimate New England usage. The parentheses don’t help.

I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.

We’ll come back to the meter on the second appearance of this abomination.

“Shan’t”, I take it, is something someone in New England might have said at some time— about as bracing as reading Robert Burns (UGH!)…I’m proud of my Scottish ancestors, too— but not because they couldn’t speak English.
“You come too” is something a ‘tard might say.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

Sing-songy, needless to say. There is some confusion about who is licking whom or what— caused in no small part by the use of “it” three times in two lines, and beginning a line with “that” apostrophed. This could be an actual Frostism—the man who never finished college never tired of condescending to his (presumably) educated audience. That could be why this poem rhymes hap-hazardly, why the dumbell syntax, even why Lil Abner’s “fetching” the calf.
(Why is he fetching the calf?)

Or, it could be Frost just assumed his readers were stupid...correctly?

I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.

About the meter...what can I say? How would this weather on Metrical III?

About Frost. To my own cost, I am probably missing something (a lot). About this poem...probably not. A while ago on this board, Julie posted a topic on a Byron effort, entitled “Great Poem or Foul-smelling Tripe?” Well, this one smells like cow-manure to me.

I invite response— and expect to get lynched. This has taken longer than it takes to fetch a calf. Duh...you come too!