| Robert Frost (1874–1963). Miscellaneous Poems to 1920. 1920. |
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| 4. For Once, Then, Something |
| | | (From Harper’s Magazine, July 1920.) |
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| OTHERS taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs | |
| Always wrong to the light, so never seeing | |
| Deeper down in the well than where the water | |
| Gives me back in a shining surface picture | |
| My myself in the summer heaven, godlike | 5 |
| Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. | |
| Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, | |
| I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, | |
| Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, | |
| Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. | 10 |
| Water came to rebuke the too clear water. | |
| One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple | |
| Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, | |
| Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? | |
| Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something. | 15 |
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