Description

“AND ONLY WAITS, A SERPENT ON ITS CHIN”: STEEPLE BUSH, SIGNED LIMITED EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED BY FROST WITH A MANUSCRIPT FRAGMENT OF ONE OF HIS POEMS

FROST, Robert. Steeple Bush. New York: Henry Holt, 1947. Octavo, original half tan cloth, gilt-stamped cover decoration, original glassine wrapper, original slipcase.

Presentation signed limited first edition, number 61 of 751 copies, additionally inscribed by Frost with a manuscript draft of six lines of his poem “The Ingenuities of Debt.” A fine copy.

One of his last collections, Steeple Bush demonstrates Frost’s ability “to branch out in new directions, taking more direct cognizance than in previous collections of the issues affecting the contemporary world” (Thompson & Winnick, 154). Frost has inscribed on the front free endpaper the final six lines of one of the poems included in this collection, “The Ingenuities of Debt,” but Frost has given these lines their own title: “In the Ruined Palace,” a line that appears in no other poetry of Frost’s. The remainder of the inscription reads: “Sand has been thrusting in the square of door/ Across the tessellation of the floor,/ And only waits, a serpent on its chin,/ Content with contemplating, taking in,/ Till it can muster breath inside a hall/ To rear against the inscription on the wall. Robert Frost. To Don Smith. Hanover 1947.” Frost has made one textual change in this inscription: the third line of the fragment is “And only waits,” while the published version reads “And only rests.” The inscription was written while Frost lived in Hanover, Vermont, where he was a member of Dartmouth University’s English Department. Without scarce original glassine. Crane A30.

A fine copy with a unique, poetic inscription by Frost.