Lines Stolen on a Gloomy Sabbath after Being Led Astray

Do you know the New York Times game Connections?  

If not, in the game, you’re presented each morning with a square consisting of sixteen boxes, four up and four down. The object is to discover an affinity of four of the words/terms that appear in the boxes, in other words., to find a common thread. Essentially, if you correctly identify three groups, you win because the final four you didn’t choose, will form the last group. 

Here’s today’s puzzle:

Frost                Beach              Pump               Pope

Race                Bishop             Pet Shop          Pound

Hardy              Beat                 Prior                 Bake

Throb              Bad                  Preheat             Pastor

The first category that came to my mind was poets’ surnames.

(Robert) Frost

(Alexander) Pope

(Elizabeth) Bishop

(Ezra) Pound

(Thomas) Hardy

This seemed unfair because there are five obvious choices, but not to worry, poets weren’t a category, and I almost botched my 48-day streak, missing my first three guesses but somehow managed to get the blue category (the second to the hardest), then the green (the second easiest), and finally, the yellow, the easiest, third, which left the purples, the hardest, now a gimme.

So I decided in protest to construct a poem by lifting lines from the poets that appeared in the puzzle.  Here it is:

Lines Stolen on a Gloomy Sabbath

Back out of all this now too much for us,

Down their carved names the rain drop ploughs.

One tear, like the bee’s sting, slips.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

And sport and flutter in the fields of air.

Sources:

Robert Frost, “Directive”

Thomas Hardy, “During Wind and Rain”

Elizabeth Bishop, “The Man Moth”

Ezra Pound, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”

Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock, Canto 1”

So thank you, whoever, constructs Connections, for leading me astray.