A thread neither mad nor sad.

[Tal]

Hi,
As Armin said, it is one of the poems by Robert Frost.
I'm a Koontz reader myself, and have often run across his intro poems attributed to "The Book of Counted Sorrows".  I've searched for such a book, but the only things I've found are like this.  However, I've found this which indicates that there was no "Book of Counted Sorrows" as of '98.  Amazon shows no such book at this time.

As to the lines by Frost appearing in a Koontz book without attribution, that sounds fishy.  Are you sure you are not misremembering?

--Pete
[right][snapback]64922[/snapback][/right]

Hi Pete - according to this page the book in question does not exist. They also quote Koontz (granted it is from an e-mail exchange a librarian had with Koontz):

"Actually, there is no such book. I made it up. The way you made up footnote sources for fabricated facts in high-school English reports. Oh, come on, yes, you did. Sometimes, when I need a bit of verse to convey some of the underlying themes of a section of a novel, I can't find anything applicable, so I write my own and attribute it to this imaginary tome. I figured readers would eventually realize THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS was my own invention, and I never expected that one day librarians and booksellers would be writing from all over the country, asking for help in tracking down this rare and mysterious volume!"