We are singing a Frost setting in choir of "Choose Something Like A Star." The interpretation offered by some (in that context of choir singing) is that it is about sticking to your principles steadfastly, but Frost is more crafty than that:
"It asks of us a certain height / So when at time the mob is moved / To carry praise or blame too far / We may choose something like a star / To stay our minds on and be staid."
Staid means conservative, stodgy. Frost is saying we should keep things in perspective, not follow the mob too far in either direction. The star is above the fray, above it all, "steadfast as Keats' Eremite." We don't have to get too excited about things. The principle here is more like a golden mediocrity than a steadfast commitment to principle or belief.
So what people want the poem to mean reflects their desires, not what the actual words are saying. Frost can have it both ways, seeming to present an inspirational message but in reality offering a more jaded point of view. Whether you like that point of view or find it abhorrent, it is more interesting than the "follow your beliefs" idea.
3 comments:
I remember singing this in freshman choir in college -- Randall Thompson. I don't think I worked out the interpretation very far then, but I do recall "staid", and how Frost appeared to be embracing the dull meaning of the word. Why are we waxing lyrical about this, I wondered. If I had thought it through further, I might have seen the ironic anti-romanticism of the text mirrored in the sweet but thin romanticism of the music.
More precisely staid means "set in one's ways", which accords exactly with your reading.
I'm not crazy about the Thompson piece. It's ok, but I think it gives too much earnestness to the poem.
Definitions of "staid" I have found are
"serious, boring, and slightly old-fashioned" or "sedate, respectable, and unadventurous"
Frost puns on "stay" the verb in the sense of supporting or propping up, holding fixed.
Compare what Keats does with the word "still" in "Bright Star," playing around with the word as "motionless" and as "yet."
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