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

  And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.”

  We do not loosen our hands’ intertwining

  (Not caring so very much what she supposes),

  There when she comes on us mistily shining

  And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

  Waiting

  Afield at Dusk

  What things for dream there are when spectre-like,

  Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,

  I enter alone upon the stubble field,

  From which the laborers’ voices late have died,

  And in the antiphony of afterglow

  And rising full moon, sit me down

  Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock

  And lose myself amid so many alike.

  I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,

  Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;

  I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,

  Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,

  Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;

  And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem

  Dimly to have made out my secret place,

  Only to lose it when he pirouettes,

  And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;

  On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp

  In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,

  That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,

  After an interval, his instrument,

  And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there;

  And on the worn book of old-golden song

  I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold

  And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;

  But on the memory of one absent most,

  For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

  In a Vale

  When I was young, we dwelt in a vale

  By a misty fen that rang all night,

  And thus it was the maidens pale

  I knew so well, whose garments trail

  Across the reeds to a window light.

  The fen had every kind of bloom,

  And for every kind there was a face,

  And a voice that has sounded in my room

  Across the sill from the outer gloom.

  Each came singly unto her place,

  But all came every night with the mist;

  And often they brought so much to say

  Of things of moment to which, they wist,

  One so lonely was fain to list,

  That the stars were almost faded away

  Before the last went, heavy with dew,

  Back to the place from which she came—

  Where the bird was before it flew,

  Where the flower was before it grew,

  Where bird and flower were one and the same.

  And thus it is I know so well

  Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.

  You have only to ask me, and I can tell.

  No, not vainly there did I dwell,

  Nor vainly listen all the night long.

  A Dream Pang

  I had withdrawn in forest, and my song

  Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;

  And to the forest edge you came one day

  (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,

  But did not enter, though the wish was strong:

  You shook your pensive head as who should say,

  “I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—

  He must seek me would he undo the wrong.”

  Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all

  Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;

  And the sweet pang it cost me not to call

  And tell you that I saw does still abide.

  But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,

  For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

  In Neglect

  They leave us so to the way we took,

  As two in whom they were proved mistaken,

  That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,

  With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,

  And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

  The Vantage Point

  If tired of trees I seek again mankind,

  Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,

  To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.

  There amid lolling juniper reclined,

  Myself unseen, I see in white defined

  Far off the homes of men, and farther still,

  The graves of men on an opposing hill,

  Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

  And if by moon I have too much of these,

  I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,

  The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,

  My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,

  I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,

  I look into the crater of the ant.

  Mowing

  There was never a sound beside the wood but one,

  And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

  What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;

  Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,

  Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—

  And that was why it whispered and did not speak.

  It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,

  Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:

  Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak

  To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,

  Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers

  (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

  The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

  My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

  Going For Water

  The well was dry beside the door,

  And so we went with pail and can

  Across the fields behind the house

  To seek the brook if still it ran;

  Not loth to have excuse to go,

  Because the autumn eve was fair

  (Though chill), because the fields were ours,

  And by the brook our woods were there.

  We ran as if to meet the moon

  That slowly dawned behind the trees,

  The barren boughs without the leaves,

  Without the birds, without the breeze.

  But once within the wood, we paused

  Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,

  Ready to run to hiding new

  With laughter when she found us soon.

  Each laid on other a staying hand

  To listen ere we dared to look,

  And in the hush we joined to make

  We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

  A note as from a single place,

  A slender tinkling fall that made

  Now drops that floated on the pool

  Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

  Revelation

  We make ourselves a place apart

  Behind light words that tease and flout,

  But oh, the agitated heart

  Till someone find us really out.

  ’Tis pity if the case require

  (Or so we say) that in the end

  We speak the literal to inspire

  The understanding of a friend.

  But so with all, from babes that play

  At hide-and-seek to God afar,

  So all who hide too well away

  Must speak and tell us where they are.

  The Trial by Existence

  Even the bravest that are slain

  Shall not dissemble their surprise

  On waking to find valor reign,

  Even as on earth, in paradise;

  And where they sought without the sword

  Wide fields of asphodel fore’er,

  To find that the utmost
reward

  Of daring should be still to dare.

  The light of heaven falls whole and white

  And is not shattered into dyes,

  The light for ever is morning light;

  The hills are verdured pasture-wise;

  The angel hosts with freshness go,

  And seek with laughter what to brave;—

  And binding all is the hushed snow

  Of the far-distant breaking wave.

  And from a cliff-top is proclaimed

  The gathering of the souls for birth,

  The trial by existence named,

  The obscuration upon earth.

  And the slant spirits trooping by

  In streams and cross- and counter-streams

  Can but give ear to that sweet cry

  For its suggestion of what dreams!

  And the more loitering are turned

  To view once more the sacrifice

  Of those who for some good discerned

  Will gladly give up paradise.

  And a white shimmering concourse rolls

  Toward the throne to witness there

  The speeding of devoted souls

  Which God makes his especial care.

  And none are taken but who will,

  Having first heard the life read out

  That opens earthward, good and ill,

  Beyond the shadow of a doubt;

  And very beautifully God limns,

  And tenderly, life’s little dream,

  But naught extenuates or dims,

  Setting the thing that is supreme.

  Nor is there wanting in the press

  Some spirit to stand simply forth,

  Heroic in its nakedness,

  Against the uttermost of earth.

  The tale of earth’s unhonored things

  Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;

  And the mind whirls and the heart sings,

  And a shout greets the daring one.

  But always God speaks at the end:

  ‘One thought in agony of strife

  The bravest would have by for friend,

  The memory that he chose the life;

  But the pure fate to which you go

  Admits no memory of choice,

  Or the woe were not earthly woe

  To which you give the assenting voice.’

  And so the choice must be again,

  But the last choice is still the same;

  And the awe passes wonder then,

  And a hush falls for all acclaim.

  And God has taken a flower of gold

  And broken it, and used therefrom

  The mystic link to bind and hold

  Spirit to matter till death come.

  ’Tis of the essence of life here,

  Though we choose greatly, still to lack

  The lasting memory at all clear,

  That life has for us on the wrack

  Nothing but what we somehow chose;

  Thus are we wholly stripped of pride

  In the pain that has but one close,

  Bearing it crushed and mystified.

  In Equal Sacrifice

  Thus of old the Douglas did:

  He left his land as he was bid

  With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce

  In a golden case with a golden lid,

  To carry the same to the Holy Land;

  By which we see and understand

  That that was the place to carry a heart

  At loyalty and love’s command,

  And that was the case to carry it in.

  The Douglas had not far to win

  Before he came to the land of Spain,

  Where long a holy war had been

  Against the too-victorious Moor;

  And there his courage could not endure

  Not to strike a blow for God

  Before he made his errand sure.

  And ever it was intended so,

  That a man for God should strike a blow,

  No matter the heart he has in charge

  For the Holy Land where hearts should go.

  But when in battle the foe were met,

  The Douglas found him sore beset,

  With only strength of the fighting arm

  For one more battle passage yet—

  And that as vain to save the day

  As bring his body safe away—

  Only a signal deed to do

  And a last sounding word to say.

  The heart he wore in a golden chain

  He swung and flung forth into the plain,

  And followed it crying ‘Heart or death!’

  And fighting over it perished fain.

  So may another do of right,

  Give a heart to the hopeless fight,

  The more of right the more he loves;

  So may another redouble might

  For a few swift gleams of the angry brand,

  Scorning greatly not to demand

  In equal sacrifice with his

  The heart he bore to the Holy Land.

  The Tuft of Flowers

  I went to turn the grass once after one

  Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

  The dew was gone that made his blade so keen

  Before I came to view the leveled scene.

  I looked for him behind an isle of trees;

  I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

  But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,

  And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

  “As all must be,” I said within my heart,

  “Whether they work together or apart.”

  But as I said it, swift there passed me by

  On noiseless wing a ’wildered butterfly,

  Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night

  Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

  And once I marked his flight go round and round,

  As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

  And then he flew as far as eye could see,

  And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

  I thought of questions that have no reply,

  And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

  But he turned first, and led my eye to look

  At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

  A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared

  Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

  I left my place to know them by their name,

  Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

  The mower in the dew had loved them thus,

  By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

  Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.

  But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

  The butterfly and I had lit upon,

  Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

  That made me hear the wakening birds around,

  And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

  And feel a spirit kindred to my own;

  So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

  But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,

  And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

  And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech

  With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

  “Men work together,” I told him from the heart,

  “Whether they work together or apart.”

  Spoils of the Dead

  Two fairies it was

  On a still summer day

  Came forth in the woods

  With the flowers to play.

  The flowers they plucked

  They cast on the ground

  For others, and those

  For still others they found.

  Flower-guided it was

  That they came as they ran

  On something that lay

  In the shape of a man.

  The snow must have made

  The fea
thery bed

  When this one fell

  On the sleep of the dead.

  But the snow was gone

  A long time ago,

  And the body he wore

  Nigh gone with the snow.

  The fairies drew near

  And keenly espied

  A ring on his hand

  And a chain at his side.

  They knelt in the leaves

  And eerily played

  With the glittering things,

  And were not afraid.

  And when they went home

  To hide in their burrow,

  They took them along

  To play with to-morrow.

  When you came on death,

  Did you not come flower-guided

  Like the elves in the wood?

  I remember that I did.

  But I recognised death

  With sorrow and dread,

  And I hated and hate

  The spoils of the dead.

  Pan With Us

  Pan came out of the woods one day,—

  His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,

  The gray of the moss of walls were they,—

  And stood in the sun and looked his fill

  At wooded valley and wooded hill.

  He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,

  On a height of naked pasture land;

  In all the country he did command

  He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.

  That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

  His heart knew peace, for none came here

  To this lean feeding save once a year

  Someone to salt the half-wild steer,

  Or homespun children with clicking pails