the world has turned and left me here

robert frost on why i never want to manage

From the latest Paris Review, some unpublished notebook scribblings of Robert Frost:

Nature is a chaos. Humanity is a ruck. The ruck is the medium of kings. They assert themselves on it to give it some semblance of order. They build it into gradations of power narrowing upward to the throne. There are periods of felicity when the state lasts for a reign and even two or three reigns or a dynasty. The people are persuaded to accept their subordinations. But the ruck is a discouraging medium to work in. Form is only roughly achieved there and at best leaves in the mind a dissatisfaction, a fear of impermanence and a relative confusion. It is always as transitional as rolling clouds where a figure never quite takes shape before it begins to be another figure. Contemplation turns from it in mental distress to the physicians. The true revolt from it is not into madness or into a reform. It is onward in the line projected by nature to human nature and so on to individual nature. It is the one man working in a medium of paint, words or notes--or wood or iron. Nothing composes the mind like composition. Let a mere man attempt no more than he is meant for. Other men are too much for him to count on organizing. Let him compose words into a poem.