I Could Give All To Time

It's been awhile since I tumbled across a new poem. For some reason I was thinking about Wally Stegner at lunch. Hell if I know why. He was a friend of my grandparents, but I wasn't really being nostalgic. It was just one of those random thoughts that seem to wander in out of the ether: hey, I wonder where Wally Stegner got the title to his books?

Like I said, random. But I googled Angle of Repose [which turns out to be the angle that an aggregate forms while resting on a slope] and Crossing to Safety. And I found a wonderful poem by Robert Frost, one that I'm not sure I knew before, but that seemed quite appropriate for the day.

I Could Give All To Time

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing around a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time's lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.

I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I wouldnot part with I have kept.