Poems of Robert Frost. Large Collection, includes A Boy's Will, North of Boston and Mountain Interval Read online

  Selected

  Early Poems

  of

  ROBERT FROST

  COYOTE CANYON PRESS

  CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA

  2009

  A Note on the Texts

  The texts published in this volume are those of the first American editions of A Boy’s Will, North of Boston, and Mountain Interval.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A Boy's Will

  Into My Own

  The youth is persuaded that he will be rather more than less himself for having forsworn the world.

  Ghost House

  He is happy in society of his choosing.

  My November Guest

  He is in love with being misunderstood.

  Love and a Question

  He is in doubt whether to admit real trouble to a place beside the hearth with love.

  A Late Walk

  He courts the autumnal mood.

  Stars

  There is no oversight of human affairs.

  Storm Fear

  He is afraid of his own isolation.

  Wind and Window Flower

  Out of the winter things he fashions a story of modern love.

  To the Thawing Wind

  He calls on change through the violence of the elements.

  A Prayer in Spring

  He discovers that the greatness of love lies not in forward-looking thoughts;

  Flower-Gathering

  nor yet in any spur it may be to ambition.

  Rose-Pogonias

  He is no dissenter from the ritualism of nature;

  Asking for Roses

  nor from the ritualism of youth which is make-believe.

  Waiting—Afield at Dusk

  He arrives at the turn of the year.

  In a Vale

  Out of old longings he fashions a story.

  A Dream Pang

  He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him.

  In Neglect

  He is scornful of folk his scorn cannot reach.

  The Vantage Point

  And again scornful, but there is no one hurt.

  Mowing

  He takes up life simply with the small tasks.

  Going for Water

  Revelation

  He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since there is no help else;

  The Trial by Existence

  and to know definitely what he thinks about the soul;

  In Equal Sacrifice

  about love;

  The Tuft of Flowers

  about fellowship;

  Spoils of the Dead

  about death;

  Pan with Us

  about art (his own);

  The Demiurge’s Laugh

  about science.

  Now Close the Door

  It is time to make an end of speaking.

  A Line-Storm Song

  It is the autumnal mood with a difference.

  October

  He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were.

  My Butterfly

  There are things that can never be the same.

  Reluctance

  North of Boston

  The Pasture

  Mending Wall

  The Death of the Hired Man

  The Mountain

  A Hundred Collars

  Home Burial

  The Black Cottage

  Blueberries

  A Servant To Servants

  After Apple-Picking

  The Code

  The Generations of Men

  The Housekeeper

  The Fear

  The Self-Seeker

  The Wood-Pile

  Good Hours

  Mountain Interval

  The Road Not Taken

  Christmas Trees

  An Old Man’s Winter Night

  A Patch of Old Snow

  In the Home Stretch

  The Telephone

  Meeting And Passing

  Hyla Brook

  The Oven Bird

  Bond And Free

  Birches

  Pea Brush

  Putting in the Seed

  A Time to Talk

  The Cow in Apple Time

  An Encounter

  Range Finding

  The Hill Wife

  The Bonfire

  A Girl’s Garden

  The Exposed Nest

  “Out, Out—”

  Brown’s Descent or The Willy-Nilly Slide

  The Gum-Gatherer

  The Line-Gang

  The Vanishing Red

  Snow

  The Sound of the Trees

  A Boy’s Will

  to

  E. M. F.

  Into My Own

  One of my wishes is that those dark trees,

  So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,

  Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,

  But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

  I should not be withheld but that some day

  Into their vastness I should steal away,

  Fearless of ever finding open land,

  Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

  I do not see why I should e’er turn back,

  Or those should not set forth upon my track

  To overtake me, who should miss me here

  And long to know if still I held them dear.

  They would not find me changed from him they knew—

  Only more sure of all I thought was true.

  Ghost House

  I dwell in a lonely house I know

  That vanished many a summer ago,

  And left no trace but the cellar walls,

  And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

  And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

  O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

  The woods come back to the mowing field;

  The orchard tree has grown one copse

  Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

  The footpath down to the well is healed.

  I dwell with a strangely aching heart

  In that vanished abode there far apart

  On that disused and forgotten road

  That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

  Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

  The whippoorwill is coming to shout

  And hush and cluck and flutter about:

  I hear him begin far enough away

  Full many a time to say his say

  Before he arrives to say it out.

  It is under the small, dim, summer star.

  I know not who these mute folk are

  Who share the unlit place with me—

  Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

  Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

  They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

  Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—

  With none among them that ever sings,

  And yet, in view of how many things,

  As sweet companions as might be had.

  My November Guest

  My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

  Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

  Are beautiful as days can be;

  She loves the bare, the withered tree;

  She walks the sodden pasture lane.

  Her pleasure will not let me stay.

  She talks and I am fain to list:

&
nbsp; She’s glad the birds are gone away,

  She’s glad her simple worsted gray

  Is silver now with clinging mist.

  The desolate, deserted trees,

  The faded earth, the heavy sky,

  The beauties she so truly sees,

  She thinks I have no eye for these,

  And vexes me for reason why.

  Not yesterday I learned to know

  The love of bare November days

  Before the coming of the snow,

  But it were vain to tell her so,

  And they are better for her praise.

  Love and a Question

  A stranger came to the door at eve,

  And he spoke the bridegroom fair.

  He bore a green-white stick in his hand,

  And, for all burden, care.

  He asked with the eyes more than the lips

  For a shelter for the night,

  And he turned and looked at the road afar

  Without a window light.

  The bridegroom came forth into the porch

  With, ‘Let us look at the sky,

  And question what of the night to be,

  Stranger, you and I.’

  The woodbine leaves littered the yard,

  The woodbine berries were blue,

  Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;

  “Stranger, I wish I knew.”

  Within, the bride in the dusk alone

  Bent over the open fire,

  Her face rose-red with the glowing coal

  And the thought of the heart’s desire.

  The bridegroom looked at the weary road,

  Yet saw but her within,

  And wished her heart in a case of gold

  And pinned with a silver pin.

  The bridegroom thought it little to give

  A dole of bread, a purse,

  A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,

  Or for the rich a curse;

  But whether or not a man was asked

  To mar the love of two

  By harboring woe in the bridal house,

  The bridegroom wished he knew.

  A Late Walk

  When I go up through the mowing field,

  The headless aftermath,

  Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

  Half closes the garden path.

  And when I come to the garden ground,

  The whir of sober birds

  Up from the tangle of withered weeds

  Is sadder than any words.

  A tree beside the wall stands bare,

  But a leaf that lingered brown,

  Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

  Comes softly rattling down.

  I end not far from my going forth

  By picking the faded blue

  Of the last remaining aster flower

  To carry again to you.

  Stars

  How countlessly they congregate

  O’er our tumultuous snow,

  Which flows in shapes as tall as trees

  When wintry winds do blow!—

  As if with keenness for our fate,

  Our faltering few steps on

  To white rest, and a place of rest

  Invisible at dawn,—

  And yet with neither love nor hate,

  Those stars like some snow-white

  Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes

  Without the gift of sight.

  Storm Fear

  When the wind works against us in the dark,

  And pelts with snow

  The lowest chamber window on the east,

  And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,

  The beast,

  “Come out! Come out!”—

  It costs no inward struggle not to go,

  Ah, no!

  I count our strength,

  Two and a child,

  Those of us not asleep subdued to mark

  How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—

  How drifts are piled,

  Dooryard and road ungraded,

  Till even the comforting barn grows far away

  And my heart owns a doubt

  Whether ’tis in us to arise with day

  And save ourselves unaided.

  Wind and Window Flower

  Lovers, forget your love,

  And list to the love of these,

  She a window flower,

  And he a winter breeze.

  When the frosty window veil

  Was melted down at noon,

  And the cagèd yellow bird

  Hung over her in tune,

  He marked her through the pane,

  He could not help but mark,

  And only passed her by,

  To come again at dark.

  He was a winter wind,

  Concerned with ice and snow,

  Dead weeds and unmated birds,

  And little of love could know.

  But he sighed upon the sill,

  He gave the sash a shake,

  As witness all within

  Who lay that night awake.

  Perchance he half prevailed

  To win her for the flight

  From the firelit looking-glass

  And warm stove-window light.

  But the flower leaned aside

  And thought of naught to say,

  And morning found the breeze

  A hundred miles away.

  To the Thawing Wind

  Come with rain, O loud Southwester!

  Bring the singer, bring the nester;

  Give the buried flower a dream;

  Make the settled snow-bank steam;

  Find the brown beneath the white;

  But whate’er you do to-night,

  Bathe my window, make it flow,

  Melt it as the ices go;

  Melt the glass and leave the sticks

  Like a hermit’s crucifix;

  Burst into my narrow stall;

  Swing the picture on the wall;

  Run the rattling pages o’er;

  Scatter poems on the floor;

  Turn the poet out of door.

  A Prayer in Spring

  Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

  And give us not to think so far away

  As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

  All simply in the springing of the year.

  Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

  Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

  And make us happy in the happy bees,

  The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

  And make us happy in the darting bird

  That suddenly above the bees is heard,

  The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

  And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

  For this is love and nothing else is love,

  The which it is reserved for God above

  To sanctify to what far ends He will,

  But which it only needs that we fulfil.

  Flower-Gathering

  I left you in the morning,

  And in the morning glow,

  You walked a way beside me

  To make me sad to go.

  Do you know me in the gloaming,

  Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?

  Are you dumb because you know me not,

  Or dumb because you know?

  All for me? And not a question

  For the faded flowers gay

  That could take me from beside you

  For the ages of a day?

  They are yours, and be the measure

  Of their worth for you to treasure,

  The measure of the little while

  That I’ve been long away.

  Rose-Pogonias

  A saturated meadow,

  Sun-shaped and jewel-small,

  A circle scarcely wider

  Than the trees around were tall;

  Where winds were quite excluded, />
  And the air was stifling sweet

  With the breath of many flowers,—

  A temple of the heat.

  There we bowed us in the burning,

  As the sun’s right worship is,

  To pick where none could miss them

  A thousand orchises;

  For though the grass was scattered,

  Yet every second spear

  Seemed tipped with wings of color,

  That tinged the atmosphere.

  We raised a simple prayer

  Before we left the spot,

  That in the general mowing

  That place might be forgot;

  Or if not all so favoured,

  Obtain such grace of hours,

  That none should mow the grass there

  While so confused with flowers.

  Asking for Roses

  A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,

  With doors that none but the wind ever closes,

  Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;

  It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

  I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;

  “I wonder,” I say, “who the owner of those is.”

  “Oh, no one you know,” she answers me airy,

  “But one we must ask if we want any roses.”

  So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly

  There in the hush of the wood that reposes,

  And turn and go up to the open door boldly,

  And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

  “Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?”

  ’Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.

  “Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!

  ’Tis summer again; there’s two come for roses.

  “A word with you, that of the singer recalling—

  Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is

  A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,