The longest night . . .

It's the winter solstice -- when the sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equator. That means that it is the longest night of the year.

This morning Willie and I watched CBS This Morning with Charles Osgood and he talked about the winter solstice (I knew it was sometime before Christmas) and then he sang the words of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (wherein Frost makes reference to the "longest night") to his own musical compostion. It was very nice. Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets. Many moons ago, I sang in a couple of choirs at the U of U. When I was in the women's chorus, we performed a series of Frost poems set to music -- the "woods" poems. This was one of them:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.