FWIW, here is my shared commentary quoting from Robert Frost as above referenced. (I would have just posted a link to the pdf but not sure how to do that, so apologies for the length.)
This March Morning’s Reflections on a Morning Past - Reflecting Back on a Wintery Morning in Yuzawa, Japan
Earlier today we joined with friends in a conference call. We were the 30th family to join and there were doubtless many others who followed. All shared a spirit of fellowship that has been recently denied as the world circumstances are not allowing for the gathering of groups. As various individuals shared their personal experiences and feelings it was cause for reflection on how despite today’s challenges there is the need to continue forward and prepare for the future ahead.
It was mere months ago that this winter season had just begun for us. We were in Yuzawa, Japan where we were nearing completion of a semester of volunteer teaching at Mikuni International College. Each school day morning we as faculty and students would gather together for a morning devotional, taking turns in offering inspirational messages. Usually there would be advance notice and an opportunity for preparing the thoughts to be shared. However, this final school day I was caught by surprise as I was asked to come forward to share a farewell message.
As I glanced out the windows that formed the back wall of the room I noted that on the tops of the not so distant mountains the first snow of the oncoming winter had fallen the night before. (A week later following our departure November snow would cover the school grounds as well.). This observation prompted me to hurriedly enter a few related key words into my iPhone’s search features and in response I was linked to the Robert Frost poem titled, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
While contemporaneously stepping to the front of the room and glancing at the words of the poem as I did so, I began to gather my thoughts to hopefully offer a coherent message to the other faculty members and students. First, I wrote on the board behind me the words, “Endure to the End.” Then I asked the students if they were familiar with that message. I went on to add how even those who are in leadership positions have confided how they individually face the same challenges as each of us do to remain faithful.
I then took the opportunity to share with those assembled the words of Robert Frost, the poet, noting how we were together experiencing the aftermath of a “Snowy Evening.:”
“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it is queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.”
Then I paused, and commented to the Japanese students, “And here is the part of Robert Frost’s poem that most of us in America are familiar with,” as I then continued to read:
“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.”
At this juncture, I then concluded by offering a challenge to the students to “Endure to the End.” I reminded them that they had “miles to go before they slept” both with regard to their focused studies as well as to their life goals.
What followed was most unexpected. Coincidence maybe, maybe not.
Just as I returned to my seat the headmaster and founder of Mikuni International College, Masakazu Watabe, stood and offered to share some additional comment. He shared with us faculty members and the gathered students that not only was Robert Frost one of his favorite American poets, but that he had likely walked in the very woods of which the poet wrote. For us it was almost as if he had personally known the poet through his experiences at the same Middlebury College located in Vermont where both he and Robert Frost had taught. From 1921 to 1963 Robert Frost spent almost every summer teaching English at Middlebury College and Masakazu Watabe has spent many a summer teaching Japanese there as well.
On the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of Middlebury Japanese School our headmaster Masakazu Watabe had in fact edited a text titled, “Japanese Studies: Over the Past Century & New Directions for the 21st Century” to honor the milestone. Included at the end of his introduction to the text he quoted another of Robert Frost’s poems - this one relating to that
event which follows “Snowy Evening:” The arrival of Spring with its welcoming leaves and “dancing flowers.”
“The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above,
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the Earth like a leather glove.
Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.
They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers
However it is in some other world
I know that this is the way in ours.”
Concluding, the author Masakazu Watabe added, “My sincere hope is that these works of today’s scholars, warriors’ dreams in summer grasses, will become some type of intellectual nourishment for the growth of a large forest of beautiful flowers and giant trees of future generations of Japan specialists in the twenty-first century.
May we expand upon that thought to remind that today’s unique challenges can and will be overcome. We too have yet “miles to go before [we] sleep” as we move forward toward that forest of beautiful flowers and giant trees ahead.
