Frost and Whitacre

This morning I decided to wake up early and go on a walk through the woods, before anyone was awake, while the day was still untainted by the hustle and bustle and stress of college students waking to their hang-overs. I blazed a trail for myself through the thigh-high snow, and found some of yesterday's paths from other adventurers to follow, too. I didn't bring anything with me except my cell phone (set on silent) and a small bottle of water (bare essentials in case I got stranded in the wilderness for a few hours).

In my head I was hearing the song "Sleep" by Eric Whitacre, a song I sang in Chamber Choir a few years ago. Beautiful doesn't do this song justice - it is pristine and passionate and the music, the chords, the voices, the words, somehow touch something deep in my soul; every time I hear it I feel like I grow and expand a little more as a person. I feel more connected, and at the same time m0re detached from the trivial and confusing questions we so often let bog us down. This song was originally written to have the words of Robert Frost's famous poem, "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening," but because of copyright issues Eric Whitacre had to ask a friend to create new lyrics. "Sleep" pulls a line from Hamlet's soliloquy - "To die, to sleep-- To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause." "What Dreams May Come" is also the title of one of my favorite movies, which I happened to watch last night.

All of these things came together on my walk this morning through the woods, in search of silence and perhaps in that silence and in the deep of the woods, to hear God. And I think I did hear Him. I felt Him there in the snow with me, and I heard Him in the music in my head and the music of the morning rustling through the trees.

This is my reworking of Frost's already perfect poem, with inspiration from my morning reflections.

Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Morning

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the Heavens though.

He'll surely see me stopping here,

to watch His woods fill up with snow.

The little birds must think it queer,

to wake with them in silence here,

between the hours of dawn's first breaths

the stillest morning of the year

before the air is stirred from rest

by words and wind; just emptiness

my woodland rambling lets me fill

with fairy flakes my mind is dressed.

Whose woods these are, He surely will

not leave me with an unfulfilled

promise of His, an oath to make

me hear in silence on this hill.

The trees their branches give a shake

to ask if there is some mistake;

I answer in a soft refrain

the snow my muffled answers takes.

These steps on deep and cushioned plain

find warmth in cold and pillowed pain

in curtained veil white forest weeps

and I by joining add my rain.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What dreams may come in dust of clay

my heart has seen in winter's day

in hidden graves and snowy keeps

My eyes on Him will find the way.