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

  Who see no little they tell no tales.

  He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach

  A new-world song, far out of reach,

  For a sylvan sign that the blue jay’s screech

  And the whimper of hawks beside the sun

  Were music enough for him, for one.

  Times were changed from what they were:

  Such pipes kept less of power to stir

  The fruited bough of the juniper

  And the fragile bluets clustered there

  Than the merest aimless breath of air.

  They were pipes of pagan mirth,

  And the world had found new terms of worth.

  He laid him down on the sun-burned earth

  And ravelled a flower and looked away—

  Play? Play?—What should he play?

  The Demiurge’s Laugh

  It was far in the sameness of the wood;

  I was running with joy on the Demon’s trail,

  Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.

  It was just as the light was beginning to fail

  That I suddenly heard—all I needed to hear:

  It has lasted me many and many a year.

  The sound was behind me instead of before,

  A sleepy sound, but mocking half,

  As of one who utterly couldn’t care.

  The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,

  Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;

  And well I knew what the Demon meant.

  I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.

  I felt as a fool to have been so caught,

  And checked my steps to make pretence

  It was something among the leaves I sought

  (Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).

  Thereafter I sat me against a tree.

  Now Close the Door

  Now close the windows and hush all the fields;

  If the trees must, let them silently toss;

  No bird is singing now, and if there is,

  Be it my loss.

  It will be long ere the marshes resume,

  It will be long ere the earliest bird:

  So close the windows and not hear the wind,

  But see all wind-stirred.

  A Line-Storm Song

  The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,

  The road is forlorn all day,

  Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,

  And the hoof-prints vanish away.

  The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,

  Expend their bloom in vain.

  Come over the hills and far with me,

  And be my love in the rain.

  The birds have less to say for themselves

  In the wood-world’s torn despair

  Than now these numberless years the elves,

  Although they are no less there:

  All song of the woods is crushed like some

  Wild, easily shattered rose.

  Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,

  Where the boughs rain when it blows.

  There is the gale to urge behind

  And bruit our singing down,

  And the shallow waters aflutter with wind

  From which to gather your gown.

  What matter if we go clear to the west,

  And come not through dry-shod?

  For wilding brooch shall wet your breast

  The rain-fresh goldenrod.

  Oh, never this whelming east wind swells

  But it seems like the sea’s return

  To the ancient lands where it left the shells

  Before the age of the fern;

  And it seems like the time when after doubt

  Our love came back amain.

  Oh, come forth into the storm and rout

  And be my love in the rain.

  October

  O hushed October morning mild,

  Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

  To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,

  Should waste them all.

  The crows above the forest call;

  To-morrow they may form and go.

  O hushed October morning mild,

  Begin the hours of this day slow,

  Make the day seem to us less brief.

  Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

  Beguile us in the way you know;

  Release one leaf at break of day;

  At noon release another leaf;

  One from our trees, one far away;

  Retard the sun with gentle mist;

  Enchant the land with amethyst.

  Slow, slow!

  For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

  Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

  Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

  For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

  My Butterfly

  Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,

  And the daft sun-assaulter, he

  That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead:

  Save only me

  (Nor is it sad to thee!)

  Save only me

  There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.

  The gray grass is not dappled with the snow;

  Its two banks have not shut upon the river;

  But it is long ago—

  It seems forever—

  Since first I saw thee glance,

  With all the dazzling other ones,

  In airy dalliance,

  Precipitate in love,

  Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,

  Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

  When that was, the soft mist

  Of my regret hung not on all the land,

  And I was glad for thee,

  And glad for me, I wist.

  Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,

  That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,

  With those great careless wings,

  Nor yet did I.

  And there were other things:

  It seemed God let thee flutter from his gentle clasp:

  Then fearful he had let thee win

  Too far beyond him to be gathered in,

  Snatched thee, o’er eager, with ungentle grasp.

  Ah! I remember me

  How once conspiracy was rife

  Against my life—

  The languor of it and the dreaming fond;

  Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought,

  The breeze three odors brought,

  And a gem-flower waved in a wand!

  Then when I was distraught

  And could not speak,

  Sidelong, full on my cheek,

  What should that reckless zephyr fling

  But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!

  I found that wing broken to-day!

  For thou are dead, I said,

  And the strange birds say.

  I found it with the withered leaves

  Under the eaves.

  Reluctance

  Out through the fields and the woods

  And over the walls I have wended;

  I have climbed the hills of view

  And looked at the world, and descended;

  I have come by the highway home,

  And lo, it is ended.

  The leaves are all dead on the ground,

  Save those that the oak is keeping

  To ravel them one by one

  And let them go scraping and creeping

  Out over the crusted snow,

  When others are sleeping.

  And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

  No longer blown hither and thither;

  The last lone aster is gone;

  The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

  The heart is still aching to seek,

  But the feet question ‘Whither?’

  Ah, when to the heart of man

  Was it ever less than a treason />
  To go with the drift of things,

  To yield with a grace to reason,

  And bow and accept and accept the end

  Of a love or a season?

  North of Boston

  to

  E. M. F.

  This Book of People

  The Pasture

  I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;

  I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away

  (And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

  I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

  I’m going out to fetch the little calf

  That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,

  It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

  I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

  “Mending Wall” takes up the theme where

  “A Tuft of Flowers” in A Boy’s Will

  laid it down.

  Mending Wall

  Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

  That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

  And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

  And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

  The work of hunters is another thing:

  I have come after them and made repair

  Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

  But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

  To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

  No one has seen them made or heard them made,

  But at spring mending-time we find them there.

  I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

  And on a day we meet to walk the line

  And set the wall between us once again.

  We keep the wall between us as we go.

  To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

  And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

  We have to use a spell to make them balance:

  “Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

  We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

  Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

  One on a side. It comes to little more:

  There where it is we do not need the wall:

  He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

  My apple trees will never get across

  And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

  He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

  Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

  If I could put a notion in his head:

  “Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it

  Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

  Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

  What I was walling in or walling out,

  And to whom I was like to give offence.

  Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

  That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,

  But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

  He said it for himself. I see him there

  Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

  In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

  He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

  Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

  He will not go behind his father’s saying,

  And he likes having thought of it so well

  He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

  The Death of the Hired Man

  Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table

  Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,

  She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage

  To meet him in the doorway with the news

  And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.”

  She pushed him outward with her through the door

  And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.

  She took the market things from Warren’s arms

  And set them on the porch, then drew him down

  To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

  “When was I ever anything but kind to him?

  But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.

  “I told him so last haying, didn’t I?

  If he left then, I said, that ended it.

  What good is he? Who else will harbour him

  At his age for the little he can do?

  What help he is there’s no depending on.

  Off he goes always when I need him most.

  He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,

  Enough at least to buy tobacco with,

  So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.

  ‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay

  Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’

  ‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’

  I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself

  If that was what it was. You can be certain,

  When he begins like that, there’s someone at him

  Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—

  In haying time, when any help is scarce.

  In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.”

  “Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said.

  “I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.”

  “He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.

  When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,

  Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,

  A miserable sight, and frightening, too—

  You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognise him—

  I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.

  Wait till you see.”

  “Where did you say he’d been?”

  “He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,

  And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.

  I tried to make him talk about his travels.

  Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.”

  “What did he say? Did he say anything?”

  “But little.”

  “Anything? Mary, confess

  He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.”

  “Warren!”

  “But did he? I just want to know.”

  “Of course he did. What would you have him say?

  Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man

  Some humble way to save his self-respect.

  He added, if you really care to know,

  He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.

  That sounds like something you have heard before?

  Warren, I wish you could have heard the way

  He jumbled everything. I stopped to look

  Two or three times—he made me feel so queer—

  To see if he was talking in his sleep.

  He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—

  The boy you had in haying four years since.

  He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.

  Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.

  He says they two will make a team for work:

  Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!

  The way he mixed that in with other things.

  He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft

  On education—you know how they fought

  All through July under the blazing sun,

  Silas up on the cart to build the load,

  Harold along beside to pitch it on.”

  “Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.”

  “Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.

  You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!

  Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.

  After so many years he still keeps finding

  Good arguments he sees he might have used.

  I sympathise. I know just how it feels

  To think of the right thing to say too late.

  Harold’s associ
ated in his mind with Latin.

  He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying

  He studied Latin like the violin

  Because he liked it—that an argument!

  He said he couldn’t make the boy believe

  He could find water with a hazel prong—

  Which showed how much good school had ever done him.

  He wanted to go over that. But most of all

  He thinks if he could have another chance

  To teach him how to build a load of hay——”

  “I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.

  He bundles every forkful in its place,

  And tags and numbers it for future reference,

  So he can find and easily dislodge it

  In the unloading. Silas does that well.

  He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.

  You never see him standing on the hay

  He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.”

  “He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be

  Some good perhaps to someone in the world.

  He hates to see a boy the fool of books.

  Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,

  And nothing to look backward to with pride,

  And nothing to look forward to with hope,

  So now and never any different.”

  Part of a moon was falling down the west,

  Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.

  Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw

  And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand

  Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,

  Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,

  As if she played unheard the tenderness

  That wrought on him beside her in the night.

  “Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:

  You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.”

  “Home,” he mocked gently.

  “Yes, what else but home?

  It all depends on what you mean by home.