Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Early Frost Bite

Columbus may have worked the wind
A new and better way to Ind
And also proved the world a ball,
But how about the wherewithal?
Not just for scientific news
Had the Queen backed him for a cruise.

Remember he had made the test
Finding the East by sailing West. 
But had he found it?
Here he was Without one trinket from Ormuz
To save the Queen from family censure
For her investment in his future.

There had been something strangely wrong
With every coast he tried along.
He could imagine nothing barrener.
The trouble was with him the mariner.
He wasn’t off a mere degree;
His reckoning was off a sea.

And to intensify the drama
Another mariner Da Gama

 ~ Robert Frost

6 comments:

The Dude said...

Robert Frost? That reads more like Ogden Nash!

deborah said...

Thanks, chick, this is good to see :)

"He wasn’t off a mere degree;
His reckoning was off a sea."

is a good corollary to:

"Oh would some Power the gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us."

chickelit said...

@deb: Check out the tag "Frost Bites" for blasts from the past.

deborah said...

Hadn't realized it was such an old tag. Thanks again.

MamaM said...

Not only old but full of comments! Many posts, long comments and large numbers of them!

In addition to some Yoo-Hoo Wooing from the chickelit himself.

rcommal said...

A mistake I made long ago was not sharing pictures of books which my great-grandfather read while spending a lifetime at sea (they ended up with me, chickelit et a). He went to sea as a VERY young kid, and by that I mean we ain't talking about a teen-ager.