A Considerable Speck is a poem by Robert Frost. Here it is, in case you are interested…
(Microscopic)
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.
You can hear Frost read many of his poems, including A Considerable Speck, here.
You can read a biography of Frost at The Literature Network, here.
There is an interesting essay about the poem and how it came to be written….
The way this inimitable poem came to be written is as curious and original as the contents of the poem itself. The poet had sat down, pen in hand, with his blank sheet before him and had even written a few lines, when he noticed — black against the white of his page — a minute speck about the size of a period. . . . It moved! At first he thought his own down-breath had moved it — a speck of fluff. If so, it was an Inconsiderable Speck. But no, it now started across the vast empty expanse of the paper on its own volition, proving that it was indeed a Considerable Speck, and worthy of attention.
My reasons for using the title of the poem as the title of this blog are actually summarized very well in the last paragraph of this essay…
[A Considerable Speck shows Frost] …as a modern poet who spoke our language, and could transmit, through these moments of insight, a new concept of the immense scale of universal life. And we of the human race, who have habitually thought of ourselves as the one and only point and acme of all creation, simply fall into our natural place in this immense concourse of evolving beings.
