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Home  »  Miscellaneous Poems to 1920  »  4. For Once, Then, Something

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Miscellaneous Poems to 1920. 1920.

4. For Once, Then, Something

(From Harper’s Magazine, July 1920.)

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

My 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.