By Robert Frost (1916)
I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As if there were no day
When they must bear. They say, and yet
They will be patient, being mud,
Loving the earth they are furled in,
And rooted in it for good.
But I shall be gone soon.
To return—if I do—
Somewhere in the fall.
I shall have less to stay for,
Less to return for, than first I knew.
Analysis
Listening to trees that “talk of going,” the speaker hears his own long-postponed departure. The poem dramatizes knowledge that refuses to become action — until its final vow breaks the stasis. Cadence carries thought: Frost makes the music of mulling into the event itself.