Robert Lee Frost

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

He halted in the wind, and, what was that Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost? He stood there bringing March against his thought,

The firm house lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook

There sandy seems the golden sky And golden seems the sandy plain. No habitation meets the eye

A speck that would have been beneath my sight On any but a paper sheet so white Set off across what I had written there.

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway; And to the forest edge you came one day

A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did

To think to know the country and now know The hillside on the day the sun lets go Ten million silver lizards out of snow!

Lancaster bore him, such a little town, Such a great man. It doesn't see him often Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead

When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift. The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,

I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day; Have clapped my hands at him from the door

To Ridgely Torrence On Last Looking into His 'Hesperides' I often see flowers from a passing car

There's a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain

Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea-fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars

I didn't make you know how glad I was To have you come and camp here on our land. I promised myself to get down some day

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.

When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don't stand still and look around

A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain, and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still. And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

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;

Inscription for a Garden Wall Winds blow the open grassy places bleak; But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,

Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for,

When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing

"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day: Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,

Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about, Wall within wall to shut fear out.

But outer Space, At least this far, For all the fuss

The great Overdog That heavenly beast With a star in one eye

As I came to the edge of the woods, Thrush music    hark! Now if it was dusk outside,

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth,

The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean, Holding the curve of one position,

If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I'm not the one for putting off the proof.

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow

From where I lingered in a lull in march outside the sugar-house one night for choice, I called the fireman with a careful voice

Some say the world will end in fire; Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size,

I left you in the morning, And in the morning glow, You walked a way beside me

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves

I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls,

The well was dry beside the door, And so we went with pail and can Across the fields behind the house

I had for my winter evening walk No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark And cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

Was there even a cause too lost, Ever a cause that was lost too long, Or that showed with the lapse of time to vain

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.

By June our brook's run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground

It was long I lay Awake that night Wishing that night

No ship of all that under sail or steam Have gathered people to us more and more But Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dream

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still,

The sentencing goes blithely on its way And takes the playfully objected rhyme As surely as it takes the stroke and time

When I was young, we dwelt in a vale By a misty fen that rang all night, And thus it was the maidens pale

Thus of old the Douglas did: He left his land as he was bid With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce

The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown

They leave us so to the way we took, As two in whom them were proved mistaken, That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,

A dented spider like a snow drop white On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of lifeless satin

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,

Seek not in me the big I capital, Not yet the little dotted in me seek. If I have in me any I at all,

A tree's leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root

The rain to the wind said, 'You push and I'll pelt.' They so smote the garden bed

A stranger came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand,

As I went down the hill along the wall There was a gate I had leaned at for the view And had just turned from when I first saw you

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;

All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind!' The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go,

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;

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too, And the daft sun-assaulter, he That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:

My Sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be;

The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land.

He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the day long voice of Eve

They sent him back to her. The letter came Saying' And she could have him. And before She could be sure there was no hidden ill

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower;

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,

O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,

(To hear us talk) The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not bar

As vain to raise a voice as a sigh In the tumult of free leaves on high. What are you in the shadow of trees

You'll wait a long, long time for anything much To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.

The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore

Not only sands and gravels Were once more on their travels, But gulping muddy gallons

It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm The flakes could find no landing place to form. Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,

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,

Nothing to say to all those marriages! She had made three herself to three of his. The score was even for them, three to three.

I hear men say to plow the snow. They cannot mean to plant it, though, Unless in bitterness to mock

The witch that came (the withered hag) To wash the steps with pail and rag, Was once the beauty Abishag,

You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white

Never have I been glad or sad That there was such a thing as bad. There had to be, I understood,

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast.

Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view

We make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated hear

The surest thing there is is we are riders, And though none too successful at it, guiders, Through everything presented, land and tide

A saturated meadow, Sun-shaped and jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider

Sea waves are green and wet, But up from where they die, Rise others vaster yet,

When I spread out my hand here today, I catch no more than a ray To feel of between thumb and fingers;

Two fairies it was On a still summer day Came forth in the woods

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,

How countlessly they congregate O'er our tumultuous snow, Which flows in shapes as tall as trees

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here

When the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lowest chamber window on the east,

Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night

For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,

I've known ere now an interfering branch Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me. But that was in the woods, to hold my hand

The bear puts both arms around the tree above her And draws it down as if it were a lover And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,

Here further up the mountain slope Than there was every any hope, My father built, enclosed a spring,

We chanced in passing by that afternoon To catch it in a sort of special picture Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees,

As far as I can see this autumn haze That spreading in the evening air both way, Makes the new moon look anything but new,

There were three in the meadow by the brook Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, With an eye always lifted toward the west

Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools.

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

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.

In going from room to room in the dark, I reached out blindly to save my face, But neglected, however lightly, to lace

He gave the solid rail a hateful kick. From far away there came an answering tick And then another tick. He knew the code:

You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,

A lantern light from deeper in the barn Shone on a man and woman in the door And threw their lurching shadows on a house

Blood has been harder to dam back than water. Just when we think we have it impounded safe Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),

The Fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn Under the hand of the village barber, And here in the angle of house and barn

I've tried the new moon tilted in the air Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster As you might try a jewel in your hair.

A governor it was proclaimed this time, When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire Ancestral memories might come together.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours

Having a wheel and four legs of its own Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone To get it anywhere that I can see.

There overtook me and drew me in To his down-hill, early-morning stride, And set me five miles on my road

LONELINESS (Her Word) One ought not to have to care

I let myself in at the kitchen door. "It's you," she said. "I can't get up. Forgive me Not answering your knock. I can no more

Over back where they speak of life as staying ('You couldn't call it living, for it ain't'), There was an old, old house renewed with paint,

Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney:

There's a place called Far-away Meadow We never shall mow in again, Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:

Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead

It went many years, But at last came a knock, And I thought of the door

The mountain held the town as in a shadow I saw so much before I slept there once: I noticed that I missed stars in the west,

The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,

Always the same, when on a fated night At last the gathered snow lets down as white As may be in dark woods, and with a song

There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

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):

If heaven were to do again, And on the pasture bars, I leaned to line the figures in

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood

The rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But now the theory goes

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,

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

"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.

She is as in a field of silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.

I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these

The old dog barks backwards without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.

You know Orien always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me

'When I was just as far as I could walk From here today, There was an hour

Out alone in the winter rain, Intent on giving and taking pain. But never was I far out of sight

More than halfway up the pass Was a spring with a broken drinking glass, And whether the farmer drank or not

Even the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign,

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

The sound of the closing outside door was all. You made no sound in the grass with your footfall, As far as you went from the door, which was not far;

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.

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.

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day I paused and said, "I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther and we shall see."

Grief may have thought it was grief. Care may have thought it was care. They were welcome to their belief,

I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb

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

Come with rain. O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream;

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

Love and forgetting might have carried them A little further up the mountain side With night so near, but not much further up.

Out of the mud two strangers came And caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim

What things for dream there are when spectre-like, Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled, I enter alone upon the stubble field,

When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast.

Lovers, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower,