Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by the great Robert Frost, an American poet who lived from 1874 to 1963.

He was the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, and certainly one of the most famous and important poets in American history.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called Hyla Brook. It goes like this.

By June, our brooks run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that it will be found either to have

gone groping underground and taken with it all the hyalibried that shouted in the mist a month ago,

like ghosts of sleigh bells and a ghost of snow, or flourished, and come up in jewelweed, weak foliage

that is blown upon and bent even against the way its waters

went. Its bed is left, a faded paper sheet, of dead leaves stuck together by the heat, a brook to none

but who remember long. This, as it will be seen, is other far than than with Brooks taken otherware in song.

We love the things we love for what they are.

This is a classic, you know, not long, but classic Robert Frost poem in some ways.

The way he plays with language, there's that line, weak foliage that is blown upon and bent even against the way its waters went.

The alliteration, the, well, the alliteration puts a lot of strain on you to enunciate, especially when the double use, right?

Even against the way its waters went.

That's classic Frost.

And I often thought that he wants us to slow down with his poems.

If you've heard him read, it seems like he reads very slowly. Some poets read more quickly.

And I think something like this is an example of him wanting us to slow down.

So the poem begins by June, our brooks run out of song and speed, which is maybe the best way

possible of saying that the, you know, the water's gone. The

hyla, by the way, are frogs. I had to look that up. They're frogs. And the brook has been named

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