“Bereft” by Robert Frost

BEREFT

Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?

What would it take my standing there for,

Holding open a restive door,

Looking down hill to a frothy shore?

Summer was past and the day was past.

Sombre clouds in the west were massed.

Out on the porch’s sagging floor,

Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly struck at my knee and missed.

Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret must be known:

Word I was in the house alone

Somehow must have gotten abroad,

Word I was in my life alone,

Word I had no one left but God.

Robert Frost

Photo credit: Jean Guichard

bereave [bih-reev]

 

verb (used with object), be·reaved or be·reft, be·reav·ing.

 

-to deprive and make desolate, especially by death (usually followed by of):

Illness bereaved them of their mother.

 

-to deprive ruthlessly or by force (usually followed by of):

The war bereaved them of their home.

 

– Obsolete . to take away by violence.

 

ORIGIN OF BEREAVE

 

before 900; Middle English bereven, Old English berēafian; cognate with Dutch berooven, German berauben, Gothic biraubōn. See be-, reave1

 

RELATED FORMS

be·reave·ment , noun

be·reav·er , noun

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“Tree at my Window” by Robert Frost

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud:
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
and all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her —
Your head so much concerned with outer.
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost
(posted in honor of my pomelo tree)

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