I hope you all are enjoying your holiday weekend! Although this is a three-day weekend, it’s not always the happiest reason to celebrate. Today is the unofficial first day of Summer, but it’s also a sad day where we remember those who’ve made tremendous sacrifices so we can enjoy our own lives in freedom and peace. I’ve always felt that Robert Frost’s melancholy poem, Not to Keep, captured the feelings of this day perfectly. The poem below (now in the public domain), was written in 1917 and is about a soldier sent home to his wife during WWI due to his wounds. What she doesn’t realize at the beginning is that not only will he have to return to the front, but his wounds aren’t just physical. It’s a poignant view of the sacrifices everyone makes during wartime, and is a reminder that peace is never free.
Not to Keep
by Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)
They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying… and she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight—
Living.— They gave him back to her alive—
How else? They are not known to send the dead—
And not disfigured visibly. His face?—
His hands? She had to look—to ask,
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”
“Enough,
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest—and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again.” The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.
{This poem is in the public domain.}
