I desperately need the scansion for Spring Pool, can anyone help??

Here's the poem, if anyone wants to scan this:

Spring Pools
by Robert Lee Frost

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.


Les

The poem, and many of the poetic devices used by Frost are discussed here: [66.102.7.104]






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2022 12:11AM by lg.

It seems to be basically iambic pentameter, with minor variations (e.g. you might say 'ALmost' rather than 'alMOST'; and it would be natural to say 'LET them' rather than 'Let THEM'; and it seems optional to pronounce 'flowery' and 'watery' each as three syllables rather than two; and there's an extra, unstressed syllable at the end of lines 3, 5, 9 and 11).

Some useful material on scansion here: [tinyurl.com]

Minor variations, huh? Scan this line for me, if you are of a mind to:

>To blot out and drink up and sweep away

Yeah, there are 10 syllables all right. But I wonder how Robert Lee would have read it.

>To blot out and drink up and sweep away

to blot/ (it) out/ and drink/ and sweep/a way ..............(it, referring to nature)


It's those dangling prepositions that get you in trouble. Don't I know it.


Les

You're right, Hugh. Reading L10 in iambic pentameter makes it sound awfully strained and amateurish! Any more natural reading of it is notably irregular. Sorry, Nicole, for overlooking that.

I take that rhythm difference in L10 as reflecting the difference in subject matter. The rest of the poem describes outdoors images that are static or nearly so - in particular the still, sky-reflecting pools of melted snow water which L11 compares to flowers (cf. TS Eliot's image of 'sapphires in the mud' in 'Burnt Norton'). L10 focuses on the prospect (merely foreshadowed in L6) of total change, portrayed not only as sudden, relatively, but also as powerful and destructive of that delicate beauty.

I can only guess how RLF would have read L10. There are several possibilities. My best guess is that he would have let it run to six beats, like six slow thumps on a bass drum, to emphasise the poet's emotional response to the envisaged change:


     To BLOT OUT and DRINK UP and SWEEP aWAY



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2022 10:10PM by IanB.

Good points, Ian. Scanning lines backwards sometimes helps, and in this one we know the last two stresses are SWEEP aWAY, but that yields:

To BLOT out AND drink UP and SWEEP aWAY

Certainly no more appealing, nuh-uh.

As Les notes, since there are such animals as headless iambs, perhaps tailless trochees also inhabit the earth, producing the blot (it) out effect. Still, it would seem that we either get six stresses or four (with two spondees as the first two feet).

It might also be that the two (boom, boom) spondees in a row sounded like three beats to Frost's ear. And furthermore, he may even be correct in that assessment - it is virtually invisible on a quick read-through. Most inconsiderate of RLF to now be dead and therefore unavailable to be questioned about it, grr.

A good place to get really good information and overviews of poems along with a lot of other things is www.sparknotes.com go there and go to the poetry section and then it will have a seperate little section called Robert Frost's early poems or something like that and it has good information on the poem. Happy to help! =)

[www.sparknotes.com]

I don't see it. Can you be more specific?