Poems By Robert Frost

A Brook in The City

A Dream Pang

A Late Walk

A Patch of Old Snow

A Peck of Gold

A Prayer in Spring

A Servant to Servants

A Soldier

A Time to talk

Acquainted with the Night

After Apple - Picking

An Old Man's Winter Night

Birches

Blue-Butterfly Day

Bond And Free

Canis Major

Come In

Desert Places

Dust of Snow

Fire and Ice

Fireflies in The Garden

Fragmentary Blue

Ghost House

Going For Water

Home Burial

Hyla Brook

In A Disused Graveyard

Into My Own

It Bids Pretty Fair

Love & A Question

Meeting and Passing

Mending Wall

Mowing

My Butterfly

My November Guest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Now Close The Windows

October

On Looking up by Chance at the Constellations

Once By the Pacific

"Out, Out -"

Range-Finding

Reluctance

Rose Pogonias

Spring Pools

Stars

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Storm Fear

The Armful

The Axe Helve

The Bear

The Code

The Cow in Apple Time

The Death of the Hired Man

The Hill Wife

The Lockless Door

The Mountain

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The Oven Bird

The Pasture

The Road Not Taken

The Runaway

The Secret Sits

The Self - Seeker

The Star - Splitter

The Telephone

The Tuft of Flowers

The Vanishing Red

The Witch of Coos

The Wood - Pile

To Earthward

To The Thawing Wind

Tree At My Window

Two Look at Two

Waiting

West Running Brook

Wind and Window Flower

Wind and Window Flower - By Robert Frost

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 caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,


He marked her though 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 signed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.


Perchange he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelight 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.




From "A Boy's Will", 1913

West Running Brook - By Robert Frost

'Fred, where is north?'


'North? North is there, my love.
The brook runs west.'


'West-running Brook then call it.'
(West-Running Brook men call it to this day.)
'What does it think k's doing running west
When all the other country brooks flow east
To reach the ocean? It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries
The way I can with you -- and you with me --
Because we're -- we're -- I don't know what we are.
What are we?'


'Young or new?'


'We must be something.
We've said we two. Let's change that to we three.
As you and I are married to each other,
We'll both be married to the brook. We'll build
Our bridge across it, and the bridge shall be
Our arm thrown over it asleep beside it.
Look, look, it's waving to us with a wave
To let us know it hears me.'


' 'Why, my dear,
That wave's been standing off this jut of shore --'
(The black stream, catching a sunken rock,
Flung backward on itself in one white wave,
And the white water rode the black forever,
Not gaining but not losing, like a bird
White feathers from the struggle of whose breast
Flecked the dark stream and flecked the darker pool
Below the point, and were at last driven wrinkled
In a white scarf against the far shore alders.)
'That wave's been standing off this jut of shore
Ever since rivers, I was going to say,'
Were made in heaven. It wasn't waved to us.'


'It wasn't, yet it was. If not to you
It was to me -- in an annunciation.'


'Oh, if you take it off to lady-land,
As't were the country of the Amazons
We men must see you to the confines of
And leave you there, ourselves forbid to enter,-
It is your brook! I have no more to say.'


'Yes, you have, too. Go on. You thought of something.'


'Speaking of contraries, see how the brook
In that white wave runs counter to itself.
It is from that in water we were from
Long, long before we were from any creature.
Here we, in our impatience of the steps,
Get back to the beginning of beginnings,
The stream of everything that runs away.
Some say existence like a Pirouot
And Pirouette, forever in one place,
Stands still and dances, but it runs away,
It seriously, sadly, runs away
To fill the abyss' void with emptiness.
It flows beside us in this water brook,
But it flows over us. It flows between us
To separate us for a panic moment.
It flows between us, over us, and with us.
And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love-
And even substance lapsing unsubstantial;
The universal cataract of death
That spends to nothingness -- and unresisted,
Save by some strange resistance in itself,
Not just a swerving, but a throwing back,
As if regret were in it and were sacred.
It has this throwing backward on itself
So that the fall of most of it is always
Raising a little, sending up a little.
Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source,
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from.
It is most us.'


'To-day will be the day....You said so.'


'No, to-day will be the day
You said the brook was called West-running Brook.'
'To-day will be the day of what we both said.'

Waiting - By Robert Frost

A field at dusk


What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
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 nighthawks peopling heaven,
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,
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 memor of one absent, most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.




From "A Boy's Will", 1913

Two Look at Two - By Robert Frost

Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking.
Then he too passed unscared along the wall.
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.

Tree At My Window - By Robert Frost

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.


Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.


But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.


That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

To The Thawing Wind - By Robert Frost

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 ice will 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.




From "A Boy's Will", 1913

To Earthward - by Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air


That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of- was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?


I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.


I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.


Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain


Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.


When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,


The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.




From "New Hampshire", 1923

The Wood - Pile - By Robert Frost

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther- and we shall see'.
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tail slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather-
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled- and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself the labor of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

The Witch of Coos - By Robert Frost

I staid the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountains, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.


MOTHER Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits
She could call up to pass a winter evening,
But won't, should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn't 'Button, button,
Who's got the button,' I would have them know.


SON: Mother can make a common table rear
And kick with two legs like an army mule.


MOTHER: And when I've done it, what good have I
done?
Rather than tip a table for you, let me
Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.
He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How could that be -- I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious
That there's something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.


SON: You wouldn't want to tell him what we have
Up attic, mother?


MOTHER: Bones -- a skeleton.


SON: But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed
Against the' attic door: the door is nailed.
It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night
Halting perplexed behind the barrier
Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get
Is back into the cellar where it came from.


MOTHER: We'll never let them, will we, son! We'll
never !


SON: It left the cellar forty years ago
And carried itself like a pile of dishes
Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,
Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,
Another from the bedroom to the attic,
Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped
it.
Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.
I was a baby: I don't know where I was.


MOTHER: The only fault my husband found with me --
I went to sleep before I went to bed,
Especially in winter when the bed
Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.
The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs
Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,
But left an open door to cool the room off
So as to sort of turn me out of it.
I was just coming to myself enough
To wonder where the cold was coming from,
When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom
And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.
The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on
When there was water in the cellar in spring
Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or a little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile:
It wasn't anyone who could be there.
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them -- and good reason.
My first impulse was to get to the knob
And hold the door. But the bones didn't try
The door; they halted helpless on the landing,
Waiting for things to happen in their favour.'
The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.
I never could have done the thing I did
If the wish hadn't been too strong in me
To see how they were mounted for this walk.
I had a vision of them put together
Not like a man, but like a chandelier.
So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.
A moment he stood balancing with emotion,
And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire
Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)
Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,
The way he did in life once; but this time
I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,
And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all directions.
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my button-box- it must be there.)
I sat up on the floor and shouted, 'Toffile,
It's coming up to you.' It had its choice
Of the door to the cellar or the hall.
It took the hall door for the novelty,
And set off briskly for so slow a thing,
Stillgoing every which way in the joints, though,
So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,
>From the slap I had just now given its hand.
I listened till it almost climbed the stairs
>From the hall to the only finished bedroom,
Before I got up to do anything;
Then ran and shouted, 'Shut the bedroom door,
Toffile, for my sake!' 'Company?' he said,
'Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed.'
So lying forward weakly on the handrail
I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light
(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own
I could see nothing. 'Toffile, I don't see it.
It's with us in the room though. It's the bones.'
'What bones?' 'The cellar bones- out of the grave.'
That made him throw his bare legs out of bed
And sit up by me and take hold of me.
I wanted to put out the light and see
If I could see it, or else mow the room,
With our arms at the level of our knees,
And bring the chalk-pile down. 'I'll tell you what-
It's looking for another door to try.
The uncommonly deep snow has made him think
Of his old song, The Wild Colonial Boy,
He always used to sing along the tote-road.
He's after an open door to get out-doors.
Let's trap him with an open door up attic.'
Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough,
Almost the moment he was given an opening,
The steps began to climb the attic stairs.
I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them.
'Quick !' I slammed to the door and held the knob.
'Toffile, get nails.' I made him nail the door shut,
And push the headboard of the bed against it.
Then we asked was there anything
Up attic that we'd ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them have it.
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,
That's what I sit up in the dark to say-
To no one any more since Toffile died.
2o3 Let them stay in the attic since they went there.
I promised Toffile to be cruel to them
For helping them be cruel once to him.


SON: We think they had a grave down in the cellar.


MOTHER: We know they had a grave down in the cellar.


SON: We never could find out whose bones they were.


MOTHER: Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.
They were a man's his father killed for me.
I mean a man he killed instead of me.
The least I could do was to help dig their grave.
We were about it one night in the cellar.
Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him
To tell the truth, suppose the time had come.
Son looks surprised to see me end a lie
We'd kept all these years between ourselves
So as to have it ready for outsiders.
But to-night I don't care enough to lie-
I don't remember why I ever cared.
Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe
Could tell you why he ever cared himself-


She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted
Among the buttons poured out in her lap.
I verified the name next morning: Toffile.
The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.

The Vanishing Red - By Robert Frost

He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
'Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with.'
You can't get back and see it as he saw it.
It's too long a story to go into now.
You'd have to have been there and lived it.
They you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.


Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling millstone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
'Come, John,' he said, 'you want to see the wheel-pint?'


He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
The he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came upstairs alone--and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch--then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel-pit all right.


From "Mountain Interval", 1916

The Tuft of Flowers - By Robert Frost

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 levelled 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 bewildered 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.


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.'

The Telephone - By Robert Frost

"When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the windowsill--
Do you remember what it was you said?"


"First tell me what it was you thought you heard."


"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."


"I may have thought as much, but not aloud."


"Well, so I came."


From "Mountain Interval", 1916

The Star - Splitter - By Robert Frost

`You know Orion always comes up sideways. 
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, 
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me 
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something 
I should have done by daylight, and indeed, 
After the ground is frozen, I should have done 
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful 
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney 
To make fun of my way of doing things, 
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me. 
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights 
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?' 
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk 
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming, 
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming 
He burned his house down for the fire insurance 
And spent the proceeds on a telescope 
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity 
About our place among the infinities. 


`What do you want with one of those blame things?' 
I asked him well beforehand. `Don't you get one!' 


`Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything 
More blameless in the sense of being less 
A weapon in our human fight,' he said. 
`I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it.' 
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground 
And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move, 
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years 
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling, 
He burned his house down for the fire insurance 
And bought the telescope with what it came to. 
He had been heard to say by several: 
`The best thing that we're put here for's to see; 
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's 
A telescope. Someone in every town 
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one. 
In Littleton it might as well be me.' 
After such loose talk it was no surprise 
When he did what he did and burned his house down. 


Mean laughter went about the town that day 
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on, 
And he could wait---we'd see to him tomorrow. 
But the first thing next morning we reflected 
If one by one we counted people out 
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long 
To get so we had no one left to live with. 
For to be social is to be forgiving. 
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us, 
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers, 
But what we miss we go to him and ask for. 
He promptly gives it back, that is if still 
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of. 
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad 
About his telescope. Beyond the age 
Of being given one for Christmas gift, 
He had to take the best way he knew how 
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was 
He took a strange thing to be roguish over. 
Some sympathy was wasted on the house, 
A good old-timer dating back along; 
But a house isn't sentient; the house 
Didn't feel anything. And if it did, 
Why not regard it as a sacrifice, 
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire, 
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction? 


Out of a house and so out of a farm 
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn 
To earn a living on the Concord railroad, 
As under-ticket-agent at a station 
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets, 
Was setting out, up track and down, not plants 
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars 
That varied in their hue from red to green. 


He got a good glass for six hundred dollars. 
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing. 
Often he bid me come and have a look 
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside, 
At a star quaking in the other end. 
I recollect a night of broken clouds 
And underfoot snow melted down to ice, 
And melting further in the wind to mud. 
Bradford and I had out the telescope. 
We spread our two legs as we spread its three, 
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it, 
And standing at our leisure till the day broke, 
Said some of the best things we ever said. 
That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter, 
Because it didn't do a thing but split 
A star in two or three, the way you split 
A globule of quicksilver in your hand 
With one stroke of your finger in the middle. 
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one, 
And ought to do some good if splitting stars 
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood. 


We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? 
Do we know any better where we are, 
And how it stands between the night tonight 
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? 
How different from the way it ever stood?


From "New Hampshire", 1923

The Self - Seeker - By Robert Frost

"Willis, I didn't want you here to-day: 
The lawyer's coming for the company. 
I'm going to sell my soul, or, rather, feet. 
Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know." 


"With you the feet have nearly been the soul; 
And if you're going to sell them to the devil, 
I want to see you do it. When's he coming?" 


"I half suspect you knew, and came on purpose 
To try to help me drive a better bargain." 


"Well, if it's true! Yours are no common feet. 
The lawyer don't know what it is he's buying: 
So many miles you might have walked you won't walk. 
You haven't run your forty orchids down. 
What does he think?--How are the blessed feet? 
The doctor's sure you're going to walk again?" 


"He thinks I'll hobble. It's both legs and feet." 


"They must be terrible--I mean to look at." 


"I haven't dared to look at them uncovered. 
Through the bed blankets I remind myself 
Of a starfish laid out with rigid points." 


"The wonder is it hadn't been your head." 


"It's hard to tell you how I managed it. 
When I saw the shaft had me by the coat, 
I didn't try too long to pull away, 
Or fumble for my knife to cut away, 
I just embraced the shaft and rode it out-- 
Till Weiss shut off the water in the wheel-pit. 
That's how I think I didn't lose my head. 
But my legs got their knocks against the ceiling." 


"Awful. Why didn't they throw off the belt 
Instead of going clear down in the wheel-pit?" 


"They say some time was wasted on the belt-- 
Old streak of leather--doesn't love me much 
Because I make him spit fire at my knuckles, 
The way Ben Franklin used to make the kite-string. 
That must be it. Some days he won't stay on. 
That day a woman couldn't coax him off. 
He's on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth 
Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys. 
Everything goes the same without me there. 
You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw 
Caterwaul to the hills around the village 
As they both bite the wood. It's all our music. 
One ought as a good villager to like it. 
No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound, 
And it's our life." 


"Yes, when it's not our death." 


"You make that sound as if it wasn't so 
With everything. What we live by we die by. 
I wonder where my lawyer is. His train's in. 
I want this over with; I'm hot and tired." 


"You're getting ready to do something foolish." 


"Watch for him, will you, Will? You let him in. 
I'd rather Mrs. Corbin didn't know; 
I've boarded here so long, she thinks she owns me. 
You're bad enough to manage without her." 


"And I'm going to be worse instead of better. 
You've got to tell me how far this is gone: 
Have you agreed to any price?" 


"Five hundred. 
Five hundred--five--five! One, two, three, four, five. 
You needn't look at me." 


"I don't believe you." 


"I told you, Willis, when you first came in. 
Don't you be hard on me. I have to take 
What I can get. You see they have the feet, 
Which gives them the advantage in the trade. 
I can't get back the feet in any case." 


"But your flowers, man, you're selling out your flowers." 


"Yes, that's one way to put it--all the flowers 
Of every kind everywhere in this region 
For the next forty summers--call it forty. 
But I'm not selling those, I'm giving them, 
They never earned me so much as one cent: 
Money can't pay me for the loss of them. 
No, the five hundred was the sum they named 
To pay the doctor's bill and tide me over. 
It's that or fight, and I don't want to fight-- 
I just want to get settled in my life, 
Such as it's going to be, and know the worst, 
Or best--it may not be so bad. The firm 
Promise me all the shooks I want to nail." 


"But what about your flora of the valley?" 


"You have me there. But that--you didn't think 
That was worth money to me? Still I own 
It goes against me not to finish it 
For the friends it might bring me. By the way, 
I had a letter from Burroughs--did I tell you?-- 
About my Cyprepedium reginæ; 
He says it's not reported so far north. 
There! there's the bell. He's rung. But you go down 
And bring him up, and don't let Mrs. Corbin.-- 
Oh, well, we'll soon be through with it. I'm tired." 


Willis brought up besides the Boston lawyer 
A little barefoot girl who in the noise 
Of heavy footsteps in the old frame house, 
And baritone importance of the lawyer, 
Stood for a while unnoticed with her hands 
Shyly behind her. 


"Well, and how is Mister----" 
The lawyer was already in his satchel 
As if for papers that might bear the name 
He hadn't at command. "You must excuse me, 
I dropped in at the mill and was detained." 


"Looking round, I suppose," said Willis. 


"Yes, 
Well, yes." 


"Hear anything that might prove useful?" 


The Broken One saw Anne. "Why, here is Anne. 
What do you want, dear? Come, stand by the bed; 
Tell me what is it?" Anne just wagged her dress 
With both hands held behind her. "Guess," she said. 


"Oh, guess which hand? My my! Once on a time 
I knew a lovely way to tell for certain 
By looking in the ears. But I forget it. 
Er, let me see. I think I'll take the right. 
That's sure to be right even if it's wrong. 
Come, hold it out. Don't change.--A Ram's Horn orchid! 
A Ram's Horn! What would I have got, I wonder, 
If I had chosen left. Hold out the left. 
Another Ram's Horn! Where did you find those, 
Under what beech tree, on what woodchuck's knoll?" 


Anne looked at the large lawyer at her side, 
And thought she wouldn't venture on so much. 


"Were there no others?" 


"There were four or five. 
I knew you wouldn't let me pick them all." 


"I wouldn't--so I wouldn't. You're the girl! 
You see Anne has her lesson learned by heart." 


"I wanted there should be some there next year." 


"Of course you did. You left the rest for seed, 
And for the backwoods woodchuck. You're the girl! 
A Ram's Horn orchid seedpod for a woodchuck 
Sounds something like. Better than farmer's beans 
To a discriminating appetite, 
Though the Ram's Horn is seldom to be had 
In bushel lots--doesn't come on the market. 
But, Anne, I'm troubled; have you told me all? 
You're hiding something. That's as bad as lying. 
You ask this lawyer man. And it's not safe 
With a lawyer at hand to find you out. 
Nothing is hidden from some people, Anne. 
You don't tell me that where you found a Ram's Horn 
You didn't find a Yellow Lady's Slipper. 
What did I tell you? What? I'd blush, I would. 
Don't you defend yourself. If it was there, 
Where is it now, the Yellow Lady's Slipper?" 


"Well, wait--it's common--it's too common." 


"Common? 
The Purple Lady's Slipper's commoner." 


"I didn't bring a Purple Lady's Slipper 
To You--to you I mean--they're both too common." 


The lawyer gave a laugh among his papers 
As if with some idea that she had scored. 


"I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets. 
It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though: 
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape. 
Somehow I'll make it right with her--she'll see. 
She's going to do my scouting in the field, 
Over stone walls and all along a wood 
And by a river bank for water flowers, 
The floating Heart, with small leaf like a heart, 
And at the sinus under water a fist 
Of little fingers all kept down but one, 
And that thrust up to blossom in the sun 
As if to say, 'You! You're the Heart's desire.' 
Anne has a way with flowers to take the place 
Of that she's lost: she goes down on one knee 
And lifts their faces by the chin to hers 
And says their names, and leaves them where they are." 


The lawyer wore a watch the case of which 
Was cunningly devised to make a noise 
Like a small pistol when he snapped it shut 
At such a time as this. He snapped it now. 


"Well, Anne, go, dearie. Our affair will wait. 
The lawyer man is thinking of his train. 
He wants to give me lots and lots of money 
Before he goes, because I hurt myself, 
And it may take him I don't know how long. 
But put our flowers in water first. Will, help her: 
The pitcher's too full for her. There's no cup? 
Just hook them on the inside of the pitcher. 
Now run.--Get out your documents! You see 
I have to keep on the good side of Anne. 
I'm a great boy to think of number one. 
And you can't blame me in the place I'm in. 
Who will take care of my necessities 
Unless I do?" 


"A pretty interlude," 
The lawyer said. "I'm sorry, but my train-- 
Luckily terms are all agreed upon. 
You only have to sign your name. Right--there." 


"You, Will, stop making faces. Come round here 
Where you can't make them. What is it you want? 
I'll put you out with Anne. Be good or go." 


"You don't mean you will sign that thing unread?" 


"Make yourself useful then, and read it for me. 
Isn't it something I have seen before?" 


"You'll find it is. Let your friend look at it." 


"Yes, but all that takes time, and I'm as much 
In haste to get it over with as you. 
But read it, read it. That's right, draw the curtain: 
Half the time I don't know what's troubling me.-- 
What do you say, Will? Don't you be a fool, 
You! crumpling folkses legal documents. 
Out with it if you've any real objection." 


"Five hundred dollars!" 


"What would you think right?" 


"A thousand wouldn't be a cent too much; 
You know it, Mr. Lawyer. The sin is 
Accepting anything before he knows 
Whether he's ever going to walk again. 
It smells to me like a dishonest trick." 


"I think--I think--from what I heard to-day-- 
And saw myself--he would be ill-advised----" 


"What did you hear, for instance?" Willis said. 


"Now the place where the accident occurred----" 


The Broken One was twisted in his bed. 
"This is between you two apparently. 
Where I come in is what I want to know. 
You stand up to it like a pair of cocks. 
Go outdoors if you want to fight. Spare me. 
When you come back, I'll have the papers signed. 
Will pencil do? Then, please, your fountain pen. 
One of you hold my head up from the pillow." 


Willis flung off the bed. "I wash my hands-- 
I'm no match--no, and don't pretend to be----" 


The lawyer gravely capped his fountain pen. 
"You're doing the wise thing: you won't regret it. 
We're very sorry for you." 


Willis sneered: 
"Who's we?--some stockholders in Boston? 
I'll go outdoors, by gad, and won't come back." 


"Willis, bring Anne back with you when you come. 
Yes. Thanks for caring. Don't mind Will: he's savage. 
He thinks you ought to pay me for my flowers. 
You don't know what I mean about the flowers. 
Don't stop to try to now. You'll miss your train. 
Good-bye." He flung his arms around his face.


From "North of Boston", 1914

The Secret Sits - By Robert Frost

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.




From "A Witness Tree", 1942

The Runaway - By Robert Frost

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say 'Whose colt?'
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head
And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey,
Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes.
'I think the little fellow's afraid of the snow.
He isn't winter-broken. It isn't play
With the little fellow at all. He's running away.
I doubt if even his mother could tell him, "Sakes,
It's only weather". He'd think she didn't know !
Where is his mother? He can't be out alone.'
And now he comes again with a clatter of stone
And mounts the wall again with whited eyes
And all his tail that isn't hair up straight.
He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.
'Whoever it is that leaves him out so late,
When other creatures have gone to stall and bin,
Ought to be told to come and take him in.'

The Road Not Taken - By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the tother, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy ans wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - 
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.


From "You Come Too", 1916

The Pasture - By Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the clear water, I may):
I shan't be gone long - You come too.


I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's too young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long - You come too. 


From "Complete Poems of Robert Frost", 1916

The Oven Bird - By Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
he says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing. 


From "Mountain Interval", 1916