[PW] Re: ?poem

[Bill Hill]

Stacey,
My hunch is that the poem may be Robert Frost's "A Considerable Speck", 
perhaps combined in her memory with a little from his "Design" with its 
nice lines about the moth wing.
Here's the text to "A Considerable Speck"

 A speck that would have been beneath my sight
 On any but a paper sheet so white
 Set off across what I had written there.
 And I had idly poised my pen in air
 To stop it with a period of ink
 When something strange about it made me think,
 This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
 But unmistakably a living mite
 With inclinations it could call its own.
 It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
 And then came racing wildly on again
 To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
 Then paused again and either drank or smelt--
 With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
 Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
 It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
 Yet must have had a set of them complete
 To express how much it didn't want to die.
 It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
 It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
 Then in the middle of the open sheet
 Cower down in desperation to accept
 Whatever I accorded it of fate.
 I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
 Collectivistic regimenting love
 With which the modern world is being swept.
 But this poor microscopic item now!
 Since it was nothing I knew evil of
 I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

 I have a mind myself and recognize
 Mind when I meet with it in any guise
 No one can know how glad I am to find
 On any sheet the least display of mind.

	-- Robert Frost <http://www.cs.rice.edu/%7Essiyer/minstrels/index_poet_F.html#Frost>



Stacey Marien wrote:

>Folks,
>
>This is for me, no rush - I have a friend who is trying to remember a poem
>she read in high school.  Here is her description:
>
>This is what I (sort of remember): in the poem (or maybe in my dream
>about the poem ;-(), she was sitting, at a desk, writing in a
>notebook, and squashed the bug, and then noticed its part -- a leg?
>a wing? -- lying on the white paper of her notebook. And then spoke
>briefly (same ideas but much more succinct than the Margaret Lange
>poem) about the life she'd so blithely taken.
>
>It wasn't long. Maybe four stanzas? Two? Six?
>
>In my mind's eye and memory's ear, I can see the grey spot on the
>page where she squashed the bug; I can see the wing (translucent?
>gossamer?) or leg (fragile? tensile? strength?) and think of verbs:
>carried, aloft, free (freedom? freely?). I can see the author with
>her chin in her hand, writing long-hand (did she set the scene or
>did I?).
>
>Anyone have any clues to this?
>
>Stacey
>
>Stacey Marien
>Business and Economics Librarian
>American University Library
>4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW
>Washington, DC 20016
>smarien at american.edu
>(202)885-3842
>(202)885-1317 - Fax
>AIM: staceyann370
>_______________________________________________
>Project Wombat
>list at project-wombat.org
>http://www.project-wombat.org
>  
>