Now He Knows All There Is To Know. Now He Is Acquainted With The Day And Night

Delmore Schwartz

(Robert Frost, 1875-1963)

Whose wood this is I think I know:
He made it sacred long ago:
He will expect me, far or near
To watch that wood immense with snow.

That famous horse must feel great fear
Now that his noble rider’s no longer here:
He gives his harness bells to rhyme
—Perhaps he will be back, in time?

All woulds were promises he kept
Throughout the night when others slept:
Now that he knows all that he did not know,
His wood is holy, and full of snow,
and all the beauty he made holy long long ago
In Boston, London, Washington,
And once by the Pacific and once in Moscow:
     and now, and now
     upon the fabulous blue river ever
     or singing from a great white bough

And wherever America is, now as before,
     and now as long, long ago
He sleeps and wakes forever more!

     “0 what a metaphysical victory
     The first day and night of death must be!”

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