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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=76033

Sitaram writes:

For 30 years, I made no attempt to contact the love of my college
years, since I assumed that she had no desire to hear from me. But
then, quite by accident, I made contact with another alumnus, who
mentioned that she had inquired about me. He surmised that she would
indeed like to hear from me, and encouraged me to take courage and
make a phone call.

Our reunion was pleasant and rewarding. She explained that it was
tremendous pain and suffering after the death of her mother which
inspired her to forgive all people for all wrongs. How beautiful and
profound I found her words to be! We may possibly see this symbiotic
relationship between suffering and forgiveness in the mystery of the
Crucifixion.

For the past five years now, since that first reunion, I have
enjoyed many conversations with the love of my youth. One day, I
thanked her for her forgiveness. I quoted from Robert Frost's
poem, 'Death of the Hired Hand," where home is described as "the
place you go to where they have to take you in." I explained that
her heart was a home for me, for I knew that whenever I might come
there, she had to take me in."

Recently, I discussed this poem with her and she commented how
certain acquaintances of hers had objected, "NO! They do not have to
take you in at home!"

I replied, "They misunderstand the emphasis and significance of the
verse. Certainly it is true that our parents and siblings and
relatives do not have to take us in. Quite often it is the case that
blood relatives reject their family member, turning them away. But
this is not the point of the verse. Rather, the emphasis is that our
real HOME IS precisely, by definition, ipso facto, that place where
we cannot be rejected. Home is where we belong IN SPITE of all that
we are and all that we are not. Home is that place where we must be
accepted because of our essential nature, flaws and transgressions
included. Home is where we are welcomed and embraced even in the
face of our own ingratitude. Sometimes home may be with a stranger
and not a blood relative or in a foreign and alien land. It is true
that charity begins at home but it is not true that every home houses
charity. The mystery of suffering gives birth to the mystery of
forgiveness and it is through such birth that we find our true mother
and brother and child."

Notice that Frost chooses to say "THE hired hand" rather than "A
hired hand." Frost's choice of the DEFINITE article is profound in
its own right. In the home of love we are not a one among many.
Rather, as in James Taylor's song, "You are the only one." There is
also a wealth of meaning in Frosts choice of words "TAKE you in"
where he might just as easily said "LET you in." As the Prodigal son
hesitatingly approaches his childhood home with halting steps, his
father, who sees him approaching from afar, runs to meet him,
matching ten strides for every hesitant step. The grammar of forgiveness always
speaks in the active voice.

Home, Love and Freedom. We seek a home. We must be loved in that
home, unconditionally. And that unconditional love and acceptance is
the essence of freedom. We are free to be who and what we are and
still be loved and at home. But such unconditional love and
forgiveness is not licentious liberty. We are ourselves transformed
and cleansed by such love and forgivness. Genuine freedom is that
gift of love which we give back as an offering at the alter of
forgiveness. True freedom is that freedom which we freely
sacrifice. Sacri + fice = "to make sacred." Such freedom, freely
sacrificed, is Paul's "law of liberty" and Christ's "truth which
makes you free," a peace which passes all understanding.

Sitaram writes:

For all the many blessings which I have enjoyed in my life, I still
feel homeless and alone, alienated.

One treasured Internet friend wrote to me these generous and
perceptive words:

As intellectually productive as you are I sense great emotional
loneliness in you ...I hope I am not being presumptuous. I wish for
your sake that it were not so. But I also wonder if that is what
works like the grain of sand in an oyster shell, to make you the
person you are, capable of introspection, analysis, self-denial for
a "higher" cause. If you were completely sated with the fulfillment
of all your desires, you might be just that -- sated -- and
completely preoccupied with prolonging that fulfillment. And we email-
watchers would be the poorer for it!

==============

There is a plaintive spiritual which says, "Sometimes I feel like a
motherless child."

http://www.lyricscrawler.com/song/96581.html

Melody by Harry Thacker Burleigh, (1866-1949)

Lyrics - traditional (unknown)
(excerpts):
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Long way from my home

Sometimes I wish I could fly
Like a bird up in the sky
Closer to my home

Motherless children have such a really hard time
A long way from home

Sometimes I feel like freedom is so near
But we're so far from home

=========

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/17841865/history/music.htm

Spirituals are sorrow songs from slaves who walked through the path
of darkness and the shadow of death. It is an emotional type of music
that expresses the experiences of the black community. Songs such
as "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," arranged by H.T.
Burleigh, and "Swing Low, Chariot" are examples of spirituals. Hymns
and inspirational music can fit within the same spiritual category,
but they do have their differences. Hymns are songs of praises to
God. This type of music was used mainly within church. It was also
used to give black soldiers the mentality of being secure from all
harm when they were fighting in the war. "Wade in the Water"
and "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," written by Charles Wesley, are two of
the songs that are commonly sung in church today. On the other hand,
inspirational songs motivate people to try to make life better for
themselves. Songs such as "Just Over in the Glory-Land," written by
Jas. W. Acuff, and "Go Down, Moses" help to uplift heavy spirits into
hopes, dreams, and aspirations to live another day and to fight for
what is right.

Black music has paved the way for black people to come together and
allowed others in different cultures to try to understand cultural
differences. Black music is the root to all present and future music
that is composed today, and it will always be remembered.

========

http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom/defpoetry.html

A wealth of poetic devices appears in blues songs.

"Sometimes I feel like a motherless child" (simile)

"Sun going down, dark gonna catch me here" (personification, imagery)
"They got me accused of forgery and I can't even write my name"
(paradox)

"You've got a good cotton crop, but it's just like shootin' dice"
(simile, paradox)

"I had religion this very day, but the whiskey and women would not
let me pray" (internal rhyme, personification)

"I can hear the Delta calling by the light of a distant star"
(personification, imagery)

"Woke up this morning with the jinx all around my bed" (metaphor)

"Go down, old Hannah; don't you rise no more. If you rise in the
morning, bring judgment sure" (personification, apostrophe)

======

http://www.pasd.k12.pa.us/PSSA/reading/lp-hand.htm

Theme: What is the measure of a person's life?

Silas was good at what he did: he could "build a load of hay" better
than anyone. Mary tells Warren that Silas has "nothing to look
backward to with pride,/ And nothing to forward to with hope.

==========

http://dartmouthyouth.com/Parents/inspirational.htm

Home is the place you go to where they have to take you in. - From
Death of the Hired Hand, By Robert Frost
It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. - Irish
Proverb

Children will not remember you for the material things you provided
but for the feeling that you cherished them. - Richard L. Evans

It is a long baptism into the sea of humankind, my daughter. Better
immersion than to live untouched. - Tillie Olsen

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like
bread, remade all the time, made new. - Ursula K. Leguin

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their
environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived life
of the parents. - Carl Jung

Your children are always your babies, even if they have gray hair. -
Janet Leigh

====

http://www.uucarlisle.org/sermons/feb2303.htm

Some of us as children left home in order to survive. Whether we
leave because of physical and/or emotional abuse, leaving home is not
only a developmental task to be pursued; it may be an utter
necessity. We may adopt another family to call home. In the Robert
Frost poem, "Death of the Hired Hand," we learn that home for Silas,
the hired man, is not the place where his family of origin lives. He,
like many of us, finds another home to be the place where we are
accepted for whom we are - our good points along with our foibles.
When Silas knows he is about to die, he does not go to his brother's
house thirteen miles down the road; his brother's home is a place
where he would feel shame. His skills, finding water with a divining
rod and his abilities to stack hay, were not valued by his brother;
instead he goes to Warren's and Mary's farm, where he has worked as a
hired hand. Although Silas has been an erratic worker, he knows that
Warren and Mary accept him. So Silas goes "home" to die. Home is
where we feel safe - especially at our most vulnerable moments.

=======

http://warren.dusd.net/~dstone/Resources/11P/Frost.htm

Excerpt from "Death of the Hired Hand"
by Robert Frost

Part of a moon was filling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
'Warren,' she said, 'he has come home to die:
You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.'

'Home,' he mocked gently.

'Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's nothing to us, any more
then was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'

'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'

====

http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/0507_f.htm

http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/0507_f.htm

March 27 is the anniversary of Robert Frost's birth in 1875.
There is a lot more to be said about Frost's life than will fit in
one of these small articles, so we will probably return to him fairly
often. For today's discussion, it is important to know that he was a
New England farmer around the turn of the century, and that he became
the best-known American poet of this century.

A friend once told me that she thought today's poem, The Death of the
Hired Man, was more like a short story than a poem. She was wrong,
and it's useful to look at how Frost uses some conventions of poetry
to make this vignette memorable.

First, it is written as blank verse: 5-footed, mostly iambic lines, a
form used at least since Elizabethan times to move a story along.
Blank verse, especially in Frost's hands, is still musical, but the
lack of rhyme directs the reader's attention to the narrative rather
than the individual lines.

Second, he makes use of the techniques of verse drama. The action
unfolds through the words of the people living it. This can be
tricky, especially when the actors have to say something in the
poet's voice, but Frost brings it off very well. The lines

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to
let you in." "I should have called it / Something you somehow
haven't to deserve."

are the heart of the poem, and it is just barely possible to imagine
Warren and Mary speaking them. These lines probably would not work in
prose dialog.

Third, Frost makes use of the poet's license to leave things to the
reader's imagination. He can suggest things about the evening, about
Silas, even about the relationship of the farm wife and her husband,
and we are satisfied, even eager, to fill in the details ourselves.
In effect it becomes our story as well as his.

===============

http://www.artmedia.ch/porter/MISCELANEOUS/LITERARY/LiteraryReader.htm
l

Frost, Robert (Lee) (1874-1963), US poet, b. San Francisco. After his
father's death (1885), his Scottish-born mother brought her family to
New England. Frost dropped out of Dartmouth College to work in a
cotton mill and as a cobbler. He then attended Harvard for two years
but dropped out because of ill health. He farmed (1899- 1906) then
taught school (1906-12). He wrote poetry, but few poems were
published. In 1912 he took his family to England. His lyric poems A
Boy's Will (1913) and narrative poems North of Boston (1914) were
enthusiastically received in England, establishing his reputation as
a poet. In 1915 he returned to the United States and purchased a farm
in Franconia, N.H. From 1916 he taught in a number of universities
and colleges including Amherst, Harvard, and the University of
Michigan. He published many volumes of poetry and received the
Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943. In 1961 he
recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of John F.
Kennedy. He used simple forms and colloquial speech in his poems
depicting the landscape and people of New England often to make
profoundstatements about life and death. Among his many well known
poems are "Birches," "The Death of the Hired Hand," "Mending
Wall," "The Road Not Taken," and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening."

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