Robert Frost: (3/26/1874--01/29/1963) For Once, Then, Something

Today is Robert Frost's birthday, so I thought I would take a look at one of his poems. "For Once, Then, Something" is one of several poems that I call his "encounter" poems. In these poems, there is an encounter or brief meeting, that one might question calling an "encounter." But, that's usual for Frost, whose simple poems become much less simple and far more ambiguous, evasive, and inconclusive the closer one looks at them.

For example, below is his poem, "For Once, Then, Something," a short, simple little poem about the narrator who once sees something which appears for a brief moment and then disappears--a poem about the transience of experience or something similar. Or, so I saw it when I first looked at it. By now, though, I've looked at it a number of times, and I'm far less certain about it than I was several decades ago when I first encountered it.


For Once, Then, Something

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
Me 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.


Now I believe that the poem isn't quite that simple. For example, let's look at the first six lines of the poem.

"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
Me myself in the summer heaven, godlike,
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs."

He just doesn't look into the well, but he looks at it in such a way that he can see only himself against the background of heaven, which makes him appear "godlike." His own reflection prevents him from seeing anything other than himself as the focal point. It is not an occasional accident, for the narrator also tells us that "[o]thers taunt him" for kneeling "[a]lways wrong" so that he can see nothing else but his own reflection. He constitutes the universe, or at least he is the most important component of the universe.



But, something happens that suggests that perhaps there is something else in the universe besides him.


"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."


He thinks he sees something "white, uncertain" which may come from the depths rather than the surface, where he customarily never goes beyond. Moreover, it is something that appears to come from beyond his reflection or even through it. This sounds almost Buddhist for a major tenet of Buddhism is that one must go deep, beyond one's ego or conscious self, to reach the True Self that lies beneath.

But, this is only a glimpse for it quickly disappears, strangely disappears if one looks closely.

"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. . ."


"Water came to rebuke" or reprimand the well water for allowing him this all too brief glimpse of something. And "a ripple" on the surface somehow not only shakes whatever it was he saw, but it "blurred it, blotted it out. . ." He caught a glimpse of something he shouldn't have seen, and action must be taken. What is strangest about this is that the object should have been visible again, once the surface ripples disappeared, but the narrator tells us, or rather asks us what it was, which suggests it never reappeared.



"What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something."


It was white, but what could it have been? Melville also wonders about whiteness, for in Moby Dick, he suggests that the white whale is something more than just a whale. For the Japanese, if I'm not mistaken, white is the color of death. It's been awhile but it seems to me that in the Roman Catholic mass, all white vestments are worn by priests only on Easter Sunday, the day of the resurrection.

But, to return to the poem, the narrator suggests two possibilities--truth or a quartz pebble--certainly a strange pairing of a concept and a small physical object. It's as if the narrator equated truth and a small quartz pebble, seeing little or no difference between them. What is it that lies in wait once one gets beyond one's own reflection? Nothing that we can definitely know, the narrator seems to suggest here.

Here is the poem again. I'm curious about what you think of it. Is Frost the simple rural, bucolic regional poet that many see him as?


For Once, Then, Something

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
Me 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.