botbertFrost.txt

Title:
A Boundless Moment



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,

And yet too ready to believe the most.



"Oh, that's the Paradise-in-bloom," I said;

And truly it was fair enough for flowers

had we but in us to assume in march

Such white luxuriance of May for ours.



We stood a moment so in a strange world,

Myself as one his own pretense deceives;

And then I said the truth (and we moved on).

A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves. 



---Title:
A Brook In The City



The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square

With the new city street it has to wear

A number in. But what about the brook

That held the house as in an elbow-crook?

I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength

And impulse, having dipped a finger length

And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed

A flower to try its currents where they crossed.

The meadow grass could be cemented down

From growing under pavements of a town;

The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.

Is water wood to serve a brook the same?

How else dispose of an immortal force

No longer needed? Staunch it at its source

With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown

Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone

In fetid darkness still to live and run --

And all for nothing it had ever done

Except forget to go in fear perhaps.

No one would know except for ancient maps

That such a brook ran water. But I wonder

If from its being kept forever under,

The thoughts may not have risen that so keep

This new-built city from both work and sleep. 



---Title:
A Cliff Dwelling



There sandy seems the golden sky

And golden seems the sandy plain.

No habitation meets the eye

Unless in the horizon rim,

Some halfway up the limestone wall,

That spot of black is not a stain

Or shadow, but a cavern hole,

Where someone used to climb and crawl

To rest from his besetting fears.

I see the callus on his soul

The disappearing last of him

And of his race starvation slim,

Oh years ago - ten thousand years. 



---Title:
A Considerable Speck



(Microscopic)



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.

And I had idly poised my pen in air

To stop it with a period of ink

When something strange about it made me think,

This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,

But unmistakably a living mite

With inclinations it could call its own.

It paused as with suspicion of my pen,

And then came racing wildly on again

To where my manuscript was not yet dry;

Then paused again and either drank or smelt--

With loathing, for again it turned to fly.

Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.

It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,

Yet must have had a set of them complete

To express how much it didn't want to die.

It ran with terror and with cunning crept.

It faltered: I could see it hesitate;

Then in the middle of the open sheet

Cower down in desperation to accept

Whatever I accorded it of fate.

I have none of the tenderer-than-thou

Collectivistic regimenting love

With which the modern world is being swept.

But this poor microscopic item now!

Since it was nothing I knew evil of

I let it lie there till I hope it slept.



I have a mind myself and recognize

Mind when I meet with it in any guise

No one can know how glad I am to find

On any sheet the least display of mind. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
A Minor Bird



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

When it seemed as if I could bear no more.



The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.



And of course there must be something wrong

In wanting to silence any song. 



---Title:
A Patch of Old Snow



There's a patch of old snow in a corner

That I should have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

Had brought to rest.



It is speckled with grime as if

Small print overspread it,

The news of a day I've forgotten --

If I ever read it. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
A Question



A voice said, Look me in the stars

And tell me truly, men of earth,

If all the soul-and-body scars

Were not too much to pay for birth. 



---Title:
A Servant To Servants



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

And see the way you lived, but I don't know!

With a houseful of hungry men to feed

I guess you'd find.... It seems to me

I can't express my feelings any more

Than I can raise my voice or want to lift

My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).

Did ever you feel so? I hope you never.

It's got so I don't even know for sure

Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything.

There's nothing but a voice-like left inside

That seems to tell me how I ought to feel,

And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong.

You take the lake. I look and look at it.

I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water.

I stand and make myself repeat out loud

The advantages it has, so long and narrow,

Like a deep piece of some old running river

Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles

Straight away through the mountain notch

From the sink window where I wash the plates,

And all our storms come up toward the house,

Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter.

It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit

To step outdoors and take the water dazzle

A sunny morning, or take the rising wind

About my face and body and through my wrapper,

When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den,

And a cold chill shivered across the lake.

I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water,

Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it?

I expect, though, everyone's heard of it.

In a book about ferns? Listen to that!

You let things more like feathers regulate

Your going and coming. And you like it here?

I can see how you might. But I don't know!

It would be different if more people came,

For then there would be business. As it is,

The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them,

Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of shore

That ought to be worth something, and may yet.

But I don't count on it as much as Len.

He looks on the bright side of everything,

Including me. He thinks I'll be all right

With doctoring. But it's not medicine--

Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so--

It's rest I want--there, I have said it out--

From cooking meals for hungry hired men

And washing dishes after them--from doing

Things over and over that just won't stay done.

By good rights I ought not to have so much

Put on me, but there seems no other way.

Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.

He says the best way out is always through.

And I agree to that, or in so far

As that I can see no way out but through--

Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced.

It's not that Len don't want the best for me.

It was his plan our moving over in

Beside the lake from where that day I showed you

We used to live--ten miles from anywhere.

We didn't change without some sacrifice,

But Len went at it to make up the loss.

His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun,

But he works when he works as hard as I do--

Though there's small profit in comparisons.

(Women and men will make them all the same.)

But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much.

He's into everything in town. This year

It's highways, and he's got too many men

Around him to look after that make waste.

They take advantage of him shamefully,

And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.

We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings,

Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk

While I fry their bacon. Much they care!

No more put out in what they do or say

Than if I wasn't in the room at all.

Coming and going all the time, they are:

I don't learn what their names are, let alone

Their characters, or whether they are safe

To have inside the house with doors unlocked.

I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not

Afraid of me. There's two can play at that.

I have my fancies: it runs in the family.

My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him

Locked up for years back there at the old farm.

I've been away once--yes, I've been away.

The State Asylum. I was prejudiced;

I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there;

You know the old idea--the only asylum

Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford,

Rather than send their folks to such a place,

Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.

But it's not so: the place is the asylum.

There they have every means proper to do with,

And you aren't darkening other people's lives--

Worse than no good to them, and they no good

To you in your condition; you can't know

Affection or the want of it in that state.

I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way.

My father's brother, he went mad ---Title:
A Soldier



He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,

That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,

But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.

If we who sight along it round the world,

See nothing worthy to have been its mark,

It is because like men we look too near,

Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,

Our missiles always make too short an arc.

They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect

The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;

They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.

But this we know, the obstacle that checked

And tripped the body, shot the spirit on

Further than target ever showed or shone. 



---Title:
A Time to Talk



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 

On all the hills I haven't hoed, 

And shout from where I am, What is it? 

No, not as there is a time to talk. 

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, 

Blade-end up and five feet tall, 

And plod: I go up to the stone wall 

For a friendly visit. 



---Title:
Acquainted with the Night



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.



I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.



I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,



But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

A luminary clock against the sky



Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night. 



---Title:
After Apple Picking



My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree 

Toward heaven still. 

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill 

Beside it, and there may be two or three 

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. 

But I am done with apple-picking now. 

Essence of winter sleep is on the night, 

The scent of apples; I am drowsing off. 

I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight 

I got from looking through a pane of glass 

I skimmed this morning from the water-trough, 

And held against the world of hoary grass. 

It melted, and I let it fall and break. 

But I was well 

Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 

And I could tell 

What form my dreaming was about to take. 

Magnified apples appear and reappear, 

Stem end and blossom end, 

And every fleck of russet showing clear. 

My instep arch not only keeps the ache, 

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. 

And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin 

That rumbling sound 

Of load on load of apples coming in. 

For I have had too much 

Of apple-picking; I am overtired 

Of the great harvest I myself desired. 

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall, 

For all 

That struck the earth, 

No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble, 

Went surely to the cider-apple heap 

As of no worth. 

One can see what will trouble 

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. 

Were he not gone, 

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his 

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, 

Or just some human sleep. 



---Title:
An Old Man's Winter Night



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.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping there, he scared it once again

In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

So late-arising, to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It's thus he does it of a winter night. 



---Title:
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, 

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. 



---Title:
Bereft



Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?

What would it take my standing there for,

Holding open a restive door,

Looking down hill to a frothy shore?

Summer was past and the day was past.

Sombre clouds in the west were massed.

Out on the porch's sagging floor,

Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly striking at my knee and missed.

Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret my be known:

Word I was in the house alone

Somehow must have gotten abroad,

Word I was in my life alone,

Word I had no one left but God. 



---Title:
Blueberries



Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, 

Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum 

In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!

And all ripe together, not some of them green

And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen! 



---Title:
Bond And Free



Love has earth to which she clings

With hills and circling arms about--

Wall within wall to shut fear out.

But Thought has need of no such things,

For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.



On snow and sand and turn, I see

Where Love has left a printed trace

With straining in the world's embrace.

And such is Love and glad to be

But Thought has shaken his ankles free.



Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom

And sits in Sirius' disc all night,

Till day makes him retrace his flight

With smell of burning on every plume,

Back past the sun to an earthly room.



His gains in heaven are what they are.

Yet some say Love by being thrall

And simply staying possesses all

In several beauty that Thought fares far

To find fused in another star. 



---Title:
But outer Space



But outer Space,

At least this far,

For all the fuss

Of the populace

Stays more popular

Than populous 



---Title:
Canis Major



The great Overdog

That heavenly beast

With a star in one eye

Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright

All the way to the west

And never once drops

On his forefeet to rest.

I'm a poor underdog,

But to-night I will bark

With the great Overdog

That romps through the dark. 



---Title:
Carpe Diem



Age saw two quiet children 

Go loving by at twilight, 

He knew not whether homeward, 

Or outward from the village, 

Or (chimes were ringing) churchward, 

He waited, (they were strangers) 

Till they were out of hearing 

To bid them both be happy. 

'Be happy, happy, happy, 

And seize the day of pleasure.' 

The age-long theme is Age's. 

'Twas Age imposed on poems 

Their gather-roses burden 

To warn against the danger 

That overtaken lovers 

From being overflooded 

With happiness should have it. 

And yet not know they have it. 

But bid life seize the present? 

It lives less in the present 

Than in the future always, 

And less in both together 

Than in the past. The present 

Is too much for the senses, 

Too crowding, too confusing- 

Too present to imagine. 



---Title:
Christmas Trees



The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine,

I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”



“You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north.

He said, “A thousand.”



“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”



He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”



Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas. 



---Title:
Come In



As I came to the edge of the woods, 

Thrush music -- hark! 

Now if it was dusk outside, 

Inside it was dark. 



Too dark in the woods for a bird 

By sleight of wing 

To better its perch for the night, 

Though it still could sing. 



The last of the light of the sun 

That had died in the west 

Still lived for one song more 

In a thrush's breast. 



Far in the pillared dark 

Thrush music went -- 

Almost like a call to come in 

To the dark and lament. 



But no, I was out for stars; 

I would not come in. 

I meant not even if asked; 

And I hadn't been. 



---Title:
Departmental



An ant on the tablecloth

Ran into a dormant moth

Of many times his size.

He showed not the least surprise.

His business wasn't with such.

He gave it scarcely a touch,

And was off on his duty run.

Yet if he encountered one

Of the hive's enquiry squad

Whose work is to find out God

And the nature of time and space,

He would put him onto the case.

Ants are a curious race;

One crossing with hurried tread

The body of one of their dead

Isn't given a moment's arrest-

Seems not even impressed.

But he no doubt reports to any

With whom he crosses antennae,

And they no doubt report

To the higher-up at court.

Then word goes forth in Formic:

'Death's come to Jerry McCormic,

Our selfless forager Jerry.

Will the special Janizary

Whose office it is to bury

The dead of the commissary

Go bring him home to his people.

Lay him in state on a sepal.

Wrap him for shroud in a petal.

Embalm him with ichor of nettle.

This is the word of your Queen.'

And presently on the scene

Appears a solemn mortician;

And taking formal position,

With feelers calmly atwiddle,

Seizes the dead by the middle,

And heaving him high in air,

Carries him out of there.

No one stands round to stare.

It is nobody else's affair 

It couldn't be called ungentle

But how thoroughly departmental 



---Title:
Desert Places



Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast

In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble showing last. 



The woods around it have it - it is theirs.

All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares. 



And lonely as it is, that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less -

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

WIth no expression, nothing to express. 



They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places. 



---Title:
Design



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 --

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.



What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?--

If design govern in a thing so small. 



---Title:
Devotion



The heart can think of no devotion

Greater than being shore to ocean -

Holding the curve of one position,

Counting an endless repetition. 



---Title:
Dust of Snow



The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree



Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part 

Of a day I had rued. 



---Title:
Evening In A Sugar Orchard



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

And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:

'O fireman, give the fire another stoke,

And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.'

I thought a few might tangle, as they did,

Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare

Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,

And so be added to the moon up there.

The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show

On every tree a bucket with a lid,

And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.

The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.

They were content to figure in the trees

As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.

And that was what the boughs were full of soon. 



---Title:
Fire and Ice



Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice. 



---Title:
Fireflies in the Garden



Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, 

And here on earth come emulating flies, 

That though they never equal stars in size, 

(And they were never really stars at heart) 

Achieve at times a very star-like start. 

Only, of course, they can't sustain the part. 



---Title:
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 gray 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. 



---Title:
For Once, Then, Something



Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs

Always wrong to the light, so never seeing

Deeper down in the well than where the water

Gives me back in a shining surface picture

Me myself in the summer heaven godlike

Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.

Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,

I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,

Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,

Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.

Water came to rebuke the too clear water.

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple

Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,

Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?

Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something. 



---Title:
Fragmentary Blue



Why make so much of fragmentary blue

In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?



Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--

Though some savants make earth include the sky;

And blue so far above us comes so high,

It only gives our wish for blue a whet. 



---Title:
Gathering Leaves



Spades take up leaves

No better than spoons,

And bags full of leaves

Are light as balloons.



I make a great noise

Of rustling all day

Like rabbit and deer

Running away.



But the mountains I raise

Elude my embrace,

Flowing over my arms

And into my face.



I may load and unload

Again and again

Till I fill the whole shed,

And what have I then?



Next to nothing for weight,

And since they grew duller

From contact with earth,

Next to nothing for color.



Next to nothing for use.

But a crop is a crop,

And who's to say where

The harvest shall stop? 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
God's Garden



God made a beatous garden

With lovely flowers strown,

But one straight, narrow pathway

That was not overgrown.

And to this beauteous garden

He brought mankind to live,

And said: 'To you, my children,

These lovely flowers I give.

Prune ye my vines and fig trees,

With care my flowerets tend,

But keep the pathway open

Your home is at the end.'



Then came another master,

Who did not love mankind,

And planted on the pathway

Gold flowers for them to find.

And mankind saw the bright flowers,

That, glitt'ring in the sun,

Quite hid the thorns of av'rice

That poison blood and bone;

And far off many wandered,

And when life's night came on,

They still were seeking gold flowers,

Lost, helpless and alone.



O, cease to heed the glamour

That blinds your foolish eyes,

Look upward to the glitter

Of stars in God's clear skies.

Their ways are pure and harmless

And will not lead astray,

Bid aid your erring footsteps

To keep the narrow way.

And when the sun shines brightly

Tend flowers that God has given

And keep the pathway open

That leads you on to heaven. 



---Title:
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
---Title:
Good-bye, and Keep Cold



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

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; 

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an axe--

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God. 



---Title:
Hannibal



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

For the generous tears of youth and song? 



---Title:
Home Burial



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.

She took a doubtful step and then undid it

To raise herself and look again. He spoke

Advancing toward her: "What is it you see

From up there always? -- for I want to know."

She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,

And her face changed from terrified to dull.

He said to gain time: "What is it you see?"

Mounting until she cowered under him.

"I will find out now -- you must tell me, dear."

She, in her place, refused him any help,

With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,

Blind creature; and a while he didn't see.

But at last he murmured, "Oh" and again, "Oh."



"What is it -- what?" she said.



				"Just that I see."



"You don't," she challenged. "Tell me what it is."



"The wonder is I didn't see at once.

I never noticed it from here before.

I must be wonted to it -- that's the reason.

The little graveyard where my people are!

So small the window frames the whole of it.

Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?

There are three stones of slate and one of marble,

Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight

On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those.

But I understand: it is not the stones,

But the child's mound ----"



			"Don't, don't, don't,

	don't," she cried.



She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm

That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;

And turned on him with such a daunting look,

He said twice over before he knew himself:

"Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?"



"Not you! -- Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!

I must get out of here. I must get air.--

I don't know rightly whether any man can."



"Amy! Don't go to someone else this time.

Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs."

He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.

"There's something I should like to ask you, dear."



"You don't know how to ask it."

				"Help me, then."



Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.



"My words are nearly always an offense.

I don't know how to speak of anything

So as to please you. But I might be taught,

I should suppose. I can't say I see how.

A man must partly give up being a man

With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement

By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off

Anything special you're a-mind to name.

Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.

Two that don't love can't live together without them.

But two that do can't live together with them."

She moved the latch a little. "Don't -- don't go.

Don't carry it to someone else this time.

Tell me about it if it's something human.

Let me into your grief. I'm not so much

Unlike other folks as your standing there

Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.

I do think, though, you overdo it a little.

What was it brought you up to think it the thing

To take your mother-loss of a first child

So inconsolably -- in the face of love.

You'd think his memory might be satisfied ----"



"There you go sneering now!"



			     "I'm not, I'm not!

You make me angry. I'll come down to you.

God, what a woman! And it's come to this,

A man can't speak of his own child that's dead."



"You can't because you don't know how to speak.

If you had any feelings, you that dug

With your own hand -- how could you? -- his little grave;

I saw you from that very window there,

Making the gravel leap and leap in air,

Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly

And roll back down the mound beside the hole.

I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you.

And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs

To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.

Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice

Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why,

But I went near to see with my own eyes.

You could sit there with the stains on your shoes

Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave

And talk about your everyday concerns.

You had stood the spade up against the wall

Outside there in the entry, for I saw it."



"I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed."



"I can repeat the very words you were saying:

'Three foggy mornings and one rainy day

Will rot the be---Title:
Hyla Brook



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

(And taken with it all the Hyla breed

That shouted in the mist a month ago,

Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--

Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,

Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent

Even against the way its waters went.

Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--

A brook to none but who remember long.

This as it will be seen is other far

Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.

We love the things we love for what they are. 



---Title:
In a Disused Graveyard



The living come with grassy tread

To read the gravestones on the hill;

The graveyard draws the living still,

But never anymore the dead.

The verses in it say and say:

"The ones who living come today

To read the stones and go away

Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

Yet can't help marking all the time

How no one dead will seem to come.

What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever

And tell the stones: Men hate to die

And have stopped dying now forever.

I think they would believe the lie. 



---Title:
In A Poem



The sentencing goes blithely on its way

And takes the playfully objected rhyme

As surely as it takes the stroke and time

In having its undeviable say. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
In Hardwood Groves



The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove.  Before the leaves can mount again To fill the trees with another shade, They must go down past things coming up. They must go down into the dark decayed.  They must be pierced by flowers and put Beneath the feet of dancing flowers. However it is in some other world I know that this is way in ours. 



---Title:
In Neglect



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, With michievous, vagrant, seraphic look, And try if we cannot feel forsaken. 



---Title:
In White



A dented spider like a snow drop white

On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth -

Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? -

Portent in little, assorted death and blight

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth? -

The beady spider, the flower like a froth,

And the moth carried like a paper kite.



What had that flower to do with being white,

The blue prunella every child's delight.

What brought the kindred spider to that height?

(Make we no thesis of the miller's plight.)

What but design of darkness and of night?

Design, design! Do I use the word aright? 



---Title:
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 though was true. 



---Title:
Iota Subscript



Seek not in me the bit I capital,

Not yet the little dotted in me seek.

If I have in me any I at all,

'Tis the iota subscript of the Greek.



So small an I as an attention beggar.

The letter you will find me subscript to

Is neither alpha, eta, nor omega,

But upsilon which is the Greek for you. 



---Title:
Iris By Night



One misty evening, one another's guide, 

We two were groping down a Malvern side 

The last wet fields and dripping hedges home. 

There came a moment of confusing lights, 

Such as according to belief in Rome 

Were seen of old at Memphis on the heights 

Before the fragments of a former sun 

Could concentrate anew and rise as one. 

Light was a paste of pigment in our eyes. 

And then there was a moon and then a scene 

So watery as to seem submarine; 

In which we two stood saturated, drowned. 

The clover-mingled rowan on the ground 

Had taken all the water it could as dew, 

And still the air was saturated too, 

Its airy pressure turned to water weight. 

Then a small rainbow like a trellis gate, 

A very small moon-made prismatic bow, 

Stood closely over us through which to go. 

And then we were vouchsafed a miracle 

That never yet to other two befell 

And I alone of us have lived to tell. 

A wonder! Bow and rainbow as it bent, 

Instead of moving with us as we went 

(To keep the pots of gold from being found), 

It lifted from its dewy pediment 

Its two mote-swimming many-colored ends 

And gathered them together in a ring. 

And we stood in it softly circled round 

From all division time or foe can bring 

In a relation of elected friends. 



---Title:
Leaves Compared with Flowers



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

It never will show much flower or fruit.



But I may be one who does not care

Ever to have tree bloom or bear.

Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,

Leaves and bark may be tree enough.



Some giant trees have bloom so small

They might as well have none at all.

Late in life I have come on fern.

Now lichens are due to have their turn.



I bade men tell me which in brief,

Which is fairer, flower or leaf.

They did not have the wit to say,

Leaves by night and flowers by day.



Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,

To lean against and hear in the dark.

Petals I may have once pursued.

Leaves are all my darker mood. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
Meeting And Passing



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

As you came up the hill. We met. But all

We did that day was mingle great and small

Footprints in summer dust as if we drew

The figure of our being less that two

But more than one as yet. Your parasol

Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.

And all the time we talked you seemed to see

Something down there to smile at in the dust.

(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)

Afterward I went past what you had passed

Before we met and you what I had passed. 



---Title:
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." 



---Title:
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 labour knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. 



---Title:
My Butterfly



Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too, And the daft sun-assaulter, he That frightened 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. 



---Title:
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:

She's glad the birds are gone away,

She's glad her simple worsted grey

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 



---Title:
Neither Out Far Nor In Deep



The people along the sand

All turn and look one way.

They turn their back on the land.

They look at the sea all day.



As long as it takes to pass

A ship keeps raising its hull;

The wetter ground like glass

Reflects a standing gull



The land may vary more;

But wherever the truth may be--

The water comes ashore,

And the people look at the sea.



They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep.

Btu when was that ever a bar

To any watch they keep? 



---Title:
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same



He would declare and could himself believe

That the birds there in all the garden round

From having heard the daylong voice of Eve

Had added to their own an oversound,

Her tone of meaning but without the words.

Admittedly an eloquence so soft

Could only have had an influence on birds

When call or laughter carried it aloft.

Be that as may be, she was in their song.

Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed

Had now persisted in the woods so long

That probably it never would be lost.

Never again would birds' song be the same.

And to do that to birds was why she came. 



---Title:
Not to Keep



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

Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,

Living. They gave him back to her alive

How else? They are not known to send the dead

And not disfigured visibly. His face?

His hands? She had to look, and ask,

"What was it, dear?" And she had given all

And still she had all they had they the lucky!

Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,

And all the rest for them permissible ease.

She had to ask, "What was it, dear?"



"Enough,"

Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,

High in the breast. Nothing but what good care

And medicine and rest, and you a week,

Can cure me of to go again." The same

Grim giving to do over for them both.

She dared no more than ask him with her eyes

How was it with him for a second trial.

And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.

They had given him back to her, but not to keep. 



---Title:
Nothing Gold Can Stay



Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay. 



---Title:
Now Close The Windows



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,

I will be long ere the earliest bird:

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

But see all wind-stirred. 



---Title:
October



O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow 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 the were all, Whose elaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost-- For the grapes' sake along the all. 



---Title:
On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations



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 sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch, 

Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud. 

The planets seem to interfere in their curves - 

But nothing ever happens, no harm is done. 

We may as well go patiently on with our life, 

And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun 

For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane. 

It is true the longest drout will end in rain, 

The longest peace in China will end in strife. 

Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake 

In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break 

On his particular time and personal sight. 

That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night. 



---Title:
Once by the Pacific



The shattered water made a misty din. 

Great waves looked over others coming in, 

And thought of doing something to the shore 

That water never did to land before. 

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, 

Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. 

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if 

The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, 

The cliff in being backed by continent; 

It looked as if a night of dark intent 

Was coming, and not only a night, an age. 

Someone had better be prepared for rage. 

There would be more than ocean-water broken 

Before God's last Put out the light was spoken. 



---Title:
Out, Out



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.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her apron

To tell them "Supper." At that word, the saw,

As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,

Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -

He must have given the hand. However it was,

Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -

He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -

The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then - the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
Plowmen



A plow, they say, to plow the snow.

They cannot mean to plant it, no --

Unless in bitterness to mock

At having cultivated rock. 



---Title:
Provide, Provide



The witch that came (the withered hag)

To wash the steps with pail and rag

Was once the beauty Abishag,



The picture pride of Hollywood.

Too many fall from great and good

For you to doubt the likelihood.



Die early and avoid the fate.

Or if predestined to die late,

Make up your mind to die in state.



Make the whole stock exchange your own!

If need be occupy a throne,

Where nobody can call you crone.



Some have relied on what they knew,

Others on being simply true.

What worked for them might work for you.



No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard

Or keeps the end from being hard.



Better to go down dignified

With boughten friendship at your side

Than none at all. Provide, provide! 



---Title:
Putting In The Seed



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

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea);

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a Springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. 



---Title:
Quandary



Never have I been glad or sad

That there was such a thing as bad.

There had to be, I understood, 

For there to have been any good. 

It was by having been contrasted

That good and bad so long had lasted.

That's why discrimination reigns.

That's why we need a lot of brains

If only to discriminate 

'Twixt what to love and what to hate.

To quote the oracle at Delphi, 

Love thy neighbor as thyself, aye, 

And hate him as thyself thou hatest.

There quandary is at its greatest.

We learned from the forbidden fruit

For brains there is no substitute.

'Unless it's sweetbreads, ' you suggest

With innuendo I detest.

You drive me to confess in ink: 

Once I was fool enough to think

That brains and sweetbreads were the same, 

Till I was caught and put to shame, 

First by a butcher, then a cook, 

Then by a scientific book.

But ' twas by making sweetbreads do

I passed with such a high I.Q. 



---Title:
Range-Finding



The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung

And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest

Before it stained a single human breast.

The stricken flower bent double and so hung.

And still the bird revisited her young.

A butterfly its fall had dispossessed

A moment sought in air his flower of rest,

Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. 



On the bare upland pasture there had spread

O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread

And straining cables wet with silver dew.

A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,

But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew. 



---Title:
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 group, 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 long aster is gone; The flowers of the witch-hazel wither; The heart is still aching to seek, But the feel 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 the end Of a love or a season? 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
Rose Pogonias



A saturated meadow,
  Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
---Title:
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 feathery 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. 



---Title:
Spring Pools



These pools that, though in forests, still reflect

The total sky almost without defect,

And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,

Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,

And yet not out by any brook or river,

But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. 



The trees that have it in their pent-up buds

To darken nature and be summer woods -

Let them think twice before they use their powers

To blot out and drink up and sweep away

These flowery waters and these watery flowers

From snow that melted only yesterday. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening



Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.



My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.



He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.



The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
The Aim Was Song



Before man to blow to right

The wind once blew itself untaught,

And did its loudest day and night

In any rough place where it caught. 



Man came to tell it what was wrong:

It hadn't found the place to blow;

It blew too hard - the aim was song.

And listen - how it ought to go! 



He took a little in his mouth,

And held it long enough for north

To be converted into south,

And then by measure blew it forth. 



By measure. It was word and note,

The wind the wind had meant to be -

A little through the lips and throat.

The aim was song - the wind could see. 



---Title:
The Armful



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 --

Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,

Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.

With all I have to hold with hand and mind

And heart, if need be, I will do my best

To keep their building balanced at my breast.

I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;

Then sit down in the middle of them all.

I had to drop the armful in the road

And try to stack them in a better load. 



---Title:
The Axe-Helve



I've known ere now an interfering branch 

Of alder catch my lifted axe behind me. 

But that was in the woods, to hold my hand 

From striking at another alder's roots, 

And that was, as I say, an alder branch. 

This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day 

Behind me on the snow in my own yard 

Where I was working at the chopping block, 

And cutting nothing not cut down already. 

He caught my axe expertly on the rise, 

When all my strength put forth was in his favor, 

Held it a moment where it was, to calm me, 

Then took it from me - and I let him take it. 

I didn't know him well enough to know 

What it was all about. There might be something 

He had in mind to say to a bad neighbour 

He might prefer to say to him disarmed. 

But all he had to tell me in French-English 

Was what he thought of- not me, but my axe; 

Me only as I took my axe to heart. 

It was the bad axe-helve some one had sold me - 

'Made on machine,' he said, ploughing the grain 

With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran 

Across the handle's long, drawn serpentine, 

Like the two strokes across a dollar sign. 

'You give her 'one good crack, she's snap raght off. 

Den where's your hax-ead flying t'rough de hair?' 

Admitted; and yet, what was that to him? 

'Come on my house and I put you one in 

What's las' awhile - good hick'ry what's grow crooked, 

De second growt' I cut myself-tough, tough!' 



Something to sell? That wasn't how it sounded. 



'Den when you say you come? It's cost you nothing. 

To-naght?' 



As well to-night as any night. 



Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove 

My welcome differed from no other welcome. 

Baptiste knew best why I was where I was. 

So long as he would leave enough unsaid, 

I shouldn't mind his being overjoyed 

(If overjoyed he was) at having got me 

Where I must judge if what he knew about an axe 

That not everybody else knew was to count 

For nothing in the measure of a neighbour. 

Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees, 

A Frenchman couldn't get his human rating. 



Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair 

That had as many motions as the world: 

One back and forward, in and out of shadow, 

That got her nowhere; one more gradual, 

Sideways, that would have run her on the stove 

In time, had she not realized her danger 

And caught herself up bodily, chair and all, 

And set herself back where she, started from. 

'She ain't spick too much Henglish- dat's too bad.' 

I was afraid, in brightening first on me, 

Then on Baptiste, as if she understood 

'What passed between us, she was only reigning. 

Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more 

Than for himself, so placed he couldn't hope 

To keep his bargain of the morning with me 

In time to keep me from suspecting him 

Of really never having meant to keep it. 



Needlessly soon he had his axe-helves out, 

A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me 

To have the best he had, or had to spare - 

Not for me to ask which, when what he took 

Had beauties he had to point me out at length 

To ensure their not being wasted on me. 

He liked to have it slender as a whipstock, 

Free from the least knot, equal to the strain 

Of bending like a sword across the knee. 

He showed me that the lines of a good helve 

Were native to the grain before the knife 

Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves 

Put on it from without. And there its strength lay 

For the hard work. He chafed its long white body 

From end to end with his rough hand shut round it. 

He tried it at the eye-hold in the axe-head. 

'Hahn, hahn,' he mused, 'don't need much taking down.' 

Baptiste knew how to make a short job long 

For love of it, and yet not waste time either. 



Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge? 

Baptiste on his defence about the children 

He kept from school, or did his best to keep - 

Whatever school and children and our doubts 

Of laid-on education had to do 

With the curves of his axe-helves and his having 

Used these unscrupulously to bring me 

To see for once the inside of his house. 

Was I desired in friendship, partly as some one 

To leave it to, whether the right to hold 

Such doubts of education should depend 

Upon the education of those who held them. 

But now he brushed the shavings from his knee 

And stood the axe there on its horse's hoof, 

Erect, but not without its waves, as when 

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden'- 

Top-heavy with a heaviness his short, 

Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down 

And in a little - ---Title:
The Bear



The bear puts both arms around the tree above her

And draws it down as if it were a lover

And its chokecherries lips to kiss good-by,

Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.

Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall

(She's making her cross-country in the fall).

Her great weight creaks the barbed wire in its staples

As she flings over and off down through the maples,

Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair.

Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.

The world has room to make a bear feel free;

The universe seems cramped to you and me.

Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage,

That all day fights a nervous inward rage,

His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.

He paces back and forth and never rests

The me-nail click and shuffle of his feet,

The telescope at one end of his beat,

And at the other end the microscope,

Two instruments of nearly equal hope,

And in conjunction giving quite a spread.

Or if he rests from scientific tread,

'Tis only to sit back and sway his head

Through ninety-odd degrees of arc, it seems,

Between two metaphysical extremes.

He sits back on his fundamental butt

With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut

(He almost looks religious but he's not),

And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,

At one extreme agreeing with one Greek

At the other agreeing with another Greek

Which may be thought, but only so to speak.

A baggy figure, equally pathetic

When sedentary and when peripatetic. 



---Title:
The Black Cottage



We chanced in passing by that afternoon

To catch it in a sort of special picture

Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees,

Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass,

The little cottage we were speaking of,

A front with just a door between two windows,

Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black.

We paused, the minister and I, to look.

He made as if to hold it at arm's length

Or put the leaves aside that framed it in.

'Pretty,' he said. 'Come in. No one will care.'

The path was a vague parting in the grass

That led us to a weathered window-sill.

We pressed our faces to the pane. 'You see,' he said,

'Everything's as she left it when she died.

Her sons won't sell the house or the things in it.

They say they mean to come and summer here

Where they were boys. They haven't come this year.

They live so far away-one is out west-

It will be hard for them to keep their word.

Anyway they won't have the place disturbed.'

A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms

Under a crayon portrait on the wall

Done sadly from an old daguerreotype.

'That was the father as he went to war.

She always, when she talked about war,

Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt

Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt

If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir

Anything in her after all the years.

He fell at Gettysburg or Fredericksburg,

I ought to know-it makes a difference which:

Fredericksburg wasn't Gettysburg, of course.

But what I'm getting to is how forsaken

A little cottage this has always seemed;

Since she went more than ever, but before-

I don't mean altogether by the lives

That had gone out of it, the father first,

Then the two sons, till she was left alone.

(Nothing could draw her after those two sons.

She valued the considerate neglect

She had at some cost taught them after years.)

I mean by the world's having passed it by-

As we almost got by this afternoon.

It always seems to me a sort of mark

To measure how far fifty years have brought us.

Why not sit down if you are in no haste?

These doorsteps seldom have a visitor.

The warping boards pull out their own old nails

With none to tread and put them in their place.

She had her own idea of things, the old lady.

And she liked talk. She had seen Garrison

And Whittier, and had her story of them.

One wasn't long in learning that she thought

Whatever else the Civil War was for

It wasn't just to keep the States together,

Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.

She wouldn't have believed those ends enough

To have given outright for them all she gave.

Her giving somehow touched the principle

That all men are created free and equal.

And to hear her quaint phrases-so removed

From the world's view to-day of all those things.

That's a hard mystery of Jefferson's.

What did he mean? Of course the easy way

Is to decide it simply isn't true.

It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.

But never mind, the Welshman got it planted

Where it will trouble us a thousand years.

Each age will have to reconsider it.

You couldn't tell her what the West was saying,

And what the South to her serene belief.

She had some art of hearing and yet not

Hearing the latter wisdom of the world.

White was the only race she ever knew.

Black she had scarcely seen, and yellow never.

But how could they be made so very unlike

By the same hand working in the same stuff?

She had supposed the war decided that.

What are you going to do with such a person?

Strange how such innocence gets its own way.

I shouldn't be surprised if in this world

It were the force that would at last prevail.

Do you know but for her there was a time

When to please younger members of the church,

Or rather say non-members in the church,

Whom we all have to think of nowadays,

I would have changed the Creed a very little?

Not that she ever had to ask me not to;

It never got so far as that; but the bare thought

Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew,

And of her half asleep was too much for me.

Why, I might wake her up and startle her.

It was the words 'descended into Hades'

That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth.

You know they suffered from a general onslaught.

And well, if they weren't true why keep right on

Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them.

Only-there was the bonnet in the pew.

Such a phrase couldn't have meant much to her.

But suppose she had missed it from the Creed

As a child misses the unsaid Good-night,

And falls asleep with heartache-how should I feel?

I'm just as glad she made me keep hands off,

F---Title:
The Bonfire



OH, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves, 

As reckless as the best of them to-night, 

By setting fire to all the brush we piled 

With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. 

Oh, let’s not wait for rain to make it safe. 

The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough 

Down dark converging paths between the pines. 

Let’s not care what we do with it to-night. 

Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile 

The way we piled it. And let’s be the talk 

Of people brought to windows by a light 

Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper. 

Rouse them all, both the free and not so free 

With saying what they’d like to do to us 

For what they’d better wait till we have done. 

Let’s all but bring to life this old volcano, 

If that is what the mountain ever was— 

And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will….” 



“And scare you too?” the children said together. 



“Why wouldn’t it scare me to have a fire 

Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know 

That still, if I repent, I may recall it, 

But in a moment not: a little spurt 

Of burning fatness, and then nothing but 

The fire itself can put it out, and that 

By burning out, and before it burns out 

It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars, 

And sweeping round it with a flaming sword, 

Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle— 

Done so much and I know not how much more 

I mean it shall not do if I can bind it. 

Well if it doesn’t with its draft bring on 

A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter, 

As once it did with me upon an April. 

The breezes were so spent with winter blowing 

They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them 

Short of the perch their languid flight was toward; 

And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven 

As I walked once round it in possession. 

But the wind out of doors—you know the saying. 

There came a gust. You used to think the trees 

Made wind by fanning since you never knew 

It blow but that you saw the trees in motion. 

Something or someone watching made that gust. 

It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass 

Of over-winter with the least tip-touch 

Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand. 

The place it reached to blackened instantly. 

The black was all there was by day-light, 

That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke— 

And a flame slender as the hepaticas, 

Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now. 

But the black spread like black death on the ground, 

And I think the sky darkened with a cloud 

Like winter and evening coming on together. 

There were enough things to be thought of then. 

Where the field stretches toward the north 

And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it 

To flames without twice thinking, where it verges 

Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear 

They might find fuel there, in withered brake, 

Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod, 

And alder and grape vine entanglement, 

To leap the dusty deadline. For my own 

I took what front there was beside. I knelt 

And thrust hands in and held my face away. 

Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating. 

A board is the best weapon if you have it. 

I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew, 

And said out loud, I couldn’t bide the smother 

And heat so close in; but the thought of all 

The woods and town on fire by me, and all 

The town turned out to fight for me—that held me. 

I trusted the brook barrier, but feared 

The road would fail; and on that side the fire 

Died not without a noise of crackling wood— 

Of something more than tinder-grass and weed— 

That brought me to my feet to hold it back 

By leaning back myself, as if the reins 

Were round my neck and I was at the plough. 

I won! But I’m sure no one ever spread 

Another color over a tenth the space 

That I spread coal-black over in the time 

It took me. Neighbors coming home from town 

Couldn’t believe that so much black had come there 

While they had backs turned, that it hadn’t been there 

When they had passed an hour or so before 

Going the other way and they not seen it. 

They looked about for someone to have done it. 

But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering 

Where all my weariness had gone and why 

I walked so light on air in heavy shoes 

In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling. 

Why wouldn’t I be scared remembering that?” 



“If it scares you, what will it do to us?” 



“Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared, 

What would you say to war if it should come? 

That’s what for reasons I should like to know— 

If you can comfort me by any answer.” 



“Oh, but war’s no---Title:
The Code—Heroics



There were three in the meadow by the brook, 

Gathering up windrows, piling haycocks up, 

With an eye always lifted toward the west, 

Where an irregular, sun-bordered cloud 

Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 

Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly 

One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, 

Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. 

The town-bred farmer failed to understand.



What was there wrong? 

Something you said just now. 

What did I say? 

About our taking pains. 

To cock the hay?—because it's going to shower? 

I said that nearly half an hour ago. 

I said it to myself as much as you.



You didn't know. But James is one big fool. 

He thought you meant to find fault with his work. 

That's what the average farmer would have meant. 

James had to take his time to chew it over 

Before he acted; he's just got round to act.



He is a fool if that's the way he takes me.

Don't let it bother you. You've found out something. 

The hand that knows his business won't be told 

To do work faster or better—those two things. 

I'm as particular as anyone: 

Most likely I'd have served you just the same: 

But I know you don't understand our ways. 

You were just talking what was in your mind, 

What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting. 

Tell you a story of what happened once. 

I was up here in Salem, at a man's 

Named Sanders, with a gang of four or five, 

Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. 

He was one of the kind sports call a spider, 

All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy 

From a humped body nigh as big as a biscuit. 

But work!—that man could work, especially 

If by so doing he could get more work 

Out of his hired help. I'm not denying 

He was hard on himself: I couldn't find 

That he kept any hours—not for himself. 

Day-light and lantern-light were one to him: 

I've heard him pounding in the barn all night. 

But what he liked was someone to encourage. 

Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behind 

And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing 

Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. 

I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks— 

We call that bulling. I'd been watching him. 

So when he paired off with me in the hayfield 

To load the load, thinks I, look out for trouble! 

I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders 

Combed it down with the rake and said, 'O. K.' 

Everything went right till we reached the barn 

With a big take to empty in a bay. 

You understand that meant the easy job 

For the man up on top of throwing down 

The hay and rolling it off wholesale, 

Where, on a mow, it would have been slow lifting. 

You wouldn't think a fellow 'd need much urging 

Under those circumstances, would you now? 

But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, 

And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, 

Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!' 

Thinks I, d'ye mean it? 'What was that you said?' 

I asked out loud so's there'd be no mistake. 

'Did you say, let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.' 

He said it over, but he said it softer. 

Never you say a thing like that to a man, 

Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as soon 

Murdered him as left out his middle name. 

I'd built the load and knew just where to find it. 

Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for 

Like meditating, and then I just dug in 

And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots. 

I looked over the side once in the dust 

And caught sight of him treading-water-like, 

Keeping his head above. 'Damn ye,' I says, 

'That gets ye!' He squeaked like a squeezed rat.



That was the last I saw or heard of him. 

I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off. 

As I sat mopping the hayseed from my neck, 

And sort of waiting to be asked about it, 

One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old man?' 

'I left him in the barn,—under the hay. 

If you want him you can go and dig him out.' 

They realized from the way I swobbed my neck 

More than was needed, something must be up. 

They headed for the barn I stayed where I was. 

They told me afterward: First they forked hay, 

A lot of it, out into the barn floor. 

Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle!



I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the temple 

Before I buried him, else I couldn't have managed. 

They excavated more. 'Go keep his wife 

Out of the barn.'

Some one looked in a window; 

And curse me, if he wasn't in the kitchen, 

Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet 

Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. 

He looked so mad in back, an---Title:
The Cow In Apple-Time



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.

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.

She bellows on a knoll against the sky.

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. 



---Title:
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 associated 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 ---Title:
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. 



---Title:
The Exposed Nest



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,

Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,

I went to show you how to make it stay,

If that was your idea, against the breeze,

And, if you asked me, even help pretend

To make it root again and grow afresh.

But 'twas no make-believe with you today,

Nor was the grass itself your real concern,

Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,

Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.

'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground

The cutter-bar had just gone champing over

(Miraculously without tasking flesh)

And left defenseless to the heat and light.

You wanted to restore them to their right

Of something interposed between their sight

And too much world at once--could means be found.

The way the nest-full every time we stirred

Stood up to us as to a mother-bird

Whose coming home has been too long deferred,

Made me ask would the mother-bird return

And care for them in such a change of scene

And might out meddling make her more afraid.

That was a thing we could not wait to learn.

We saw the risk we took in doing good,

But dared not spare to do the best we could

Though harm should come of it; so built the screen

You had begun, and gave them back their shade.

All this to prove we cared. Why is there then

No more to tell? We turned to other things.

I haven't any memory--have you?--

Of ever coming to the place again

To see if the birds lived the first night through,

And so at last to learn to use their wings. 



---Title:
The Fear



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

Near by, all dark in every glossy window.

A horse's hoof pawed once the hollow floor,

And the back of the gig they stood beside

Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel,

The woman spoke out sharply, 'Whoa, stand still!'

'I saw it just as plain as a white plate,'

She said, 'as the light on the dashboard ran

Along the bushes at the roadside-a man's face.

You must have seen it too.'

'I didn't see it.

Are you sure--'

'Yes, I'm sure!'

'-it was a face?'

'Joel, I'll have to look. I can't go in,

I can't, and leave a thing like that unsettled.

Doors locked and curtains drawn will make no difference.

I always have felt strange when we came home

To the dark house after so long an absence,

And the key rattled loudly into place

Seemed to warn someone to be getting out

At one door as we entered at another.

What if I'm right, and someone all the time-

Don't hold my arm!'

'I say it's someone passing.'

'You speak as if this were a travelled road.

You forget where we are. What is beyond

That he'd be going to or coming from

At such an hour of night, and on foot too.

What was he standing still for in the bushes?'

'It's not so very late-it's only dark.

There's more in it than you're inclined to say.

Did he look like--?'

'He looked like anyone.

I'll never rest to-night unless I know.

Give me the lantern.'

'You don't want the lantern.'

She pushed past him and got it for herself.

'You're not to come,' she said. 'This is my business.

If the time's come to face it, I'm the one

To put it the right way. He'd never dare-

Listen! He kicked a stone. Hear that, hear that!

He's coming towards us. Joel, go in-please.

Hark!-I don't hear him now. But please go in.'

'In the first place you can't make me believe it's--'

'It is-or someone else he's sent to watch.

And now's the time to have it out with him

While we know definitely where he is.

Let him get off and he'll be everywhere

Around us, looking out of trees and bushes

Till I sha'n't dare to set a foot outdoors.

And I can't stand it. Joel, let me go!'

'But it's nonsense to think he'd care enough.'

'You mean you couldn't understand his caring.

Oh, but you see he hadn't had enough-

Joel, I won't-I won't-I promise you.

We mustn't say hard things. You mustn't either.'

'I'll be the one, if anybody goes!

But you give him the advantage with this light.

What couldn't he do to us standing here!

And if to see was what he wanted, why

He has seen all there was to see and gone.'

He appeared to forget to keep his hold,

But advanced with her as she crossed the grass.

'What do you want?' she cried to all the dark.

She stretched up tall to overlook the light

That hung in both hands hot against her skirt.

'There's no one; so you're wrong,' he said.

'There is.-

What do you want?' she cried, and then herself

Was startled when an answer really came.

'Nothing.' It came from well along the road.

She reached a hand to Joel for support:

The smell of scorching woollen made her faint.

'What are you doing round this house at night?'

'Nothing.' A pause: there seemed no more to say.

And then the voice again: 'You seem afraid.

I saw by the way you whipped up the horse.

I'll just come forward in the lantern light

And let you see.'

'Yes, do.-Joel, go back!'

She stood her ground against the noisy steps

That came on, but her body rocked a little.

'You see,' the voice said.

'Oh.' She looked and looked.

'You don't see-I've a child here by the hand.'

'What's a child doing at this time of night--?'

'Out walking. Every child should have the memory

Of at least one long-after-bedtime walk.

What, son?'

'Then I should think you'd try to find

Somewhere to walk--'

'The highway as it happens-

We're stopping for the fortnight down at Dean's.'

'But if that's all-Joel-you realize-

You won't think anything. You understand?

You understand that we have to be careful.

This is a very, very lonely place.

Joel!' She spoke as if she couldn't turn.

The swinging lantern lengthened to the ground,

It touched, it struck it, clattered and went out. 



---Title:
The Flower Boat



The fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn

Under the hand of the village barber,

And her in the angle of house and barn

His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.



At anchor she rides the sunny sod

As full to the gunnel of flowers growing

As ever she turned her home with cod

From George's bank when winds were blowing.



And I judge from that elysian freight

That all they ask is rougher weather,

And dory and master will sail by fate

To seek the Happy Isles together. 



---Title:
The Gift Outright



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

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England's, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become. 



---Title:
The Gum-Gatherer



There overtook me and drew me in

To his down-hill, early-morning stride,

And set me five miles on my road

Better than if he had had me ride,

A man with a swinging bag for'load

And half the bag wound round his hand.

We talked like barking above the din

Of water we walked along beside.

And for my telling him where I'd been

And where I lived in mountain land

To be coming home the way I was,

He told me a little about himself.

He came from higher up in the pass

Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks

Is blocks split off the mountain mass --

And hop. eless grist enough it looks

Ever to grind to soil for grass.

(The way it is will do for moss.)

There he had built his stolen shack.

It had to be a stolen shack

Because of the fears of fire and logs

That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:

Visions of half the world burned black

And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.

We know who when they come to town

Bring berries under the wagon seat,

Or a basket of eggs between their feet;

What this man brought in a cotton sack

Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce.

He showed me lumps of the scented stuff

Like uncut jewels, dull and rough

It comes to market golden brown;

But turns to pink between the teeth.

I told him this is a pleasant life

To set your breast to the bark of trees

That all your days are dim beneath,

And reaching up with a little knife,

To loose the resin and take it down

And bring it to market when you please 



---Title:
The Impulse



It was too lonely for her there,

And too wild,

And since there were but two of them,

And no child,



And work was little in the house,

She was free,

And followed where he furrowed field,

Or felled tree.



She rested on a log and tossed

The fresh chips,

With a song only to herself

On her lips.



And once she went to break a bough

Of black alder.

She strayed so far she scarcely heard

When he called her-



And didn't answer-didn't speak-

Or return.

She stood, and then she ran and hid

In the fern.



He never found her, though he looked

Everywhere,

And he asked at her mother's house

Was she there.



Sudden and swift and light as that

The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities

Besides the grave. 



---Title:
The Line-Gang



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

They string together with a living thread.

They string an instrument against the sky

Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken

Will run as hushed as when they were a thought

But in no hush they string it: they go past

With shouts afar to pull the cable taught,

To hold it hard until they make it fast,

To ease away -- they have it. With a laugh,

An oath of towns that set the wild at naught

They bring the telephone and telegraph. 



---Title:
The Lockless Door



It went many years,

But at last came a knock,

And I thought of the door

With no lock to lock.



I blew out the light,

I tip-toed the floor,

And raised both hands

In prayer to the door.



But the knock came again

My window was wide;

I climbed on the sill

And descended outside.



Back over the sill

I bade a "Come in"

To whoever the knock

At the door may have been.



So at a knock

I emptied my cage

To hide in the world

And alter with age. 



---Title:
The Mountain



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,

Where its black body cut into the sky.

Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall

Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.

And yet between the town and it I found,

When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,

Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.

The river at the time was fallen away,

And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;

But the signs showed what it had done in spring;

Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass

Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.

I crossed the river and swung round the mountain.

And there I met a man who moved so slow

With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart,

It seemed no hand to stop him altogether.

'What town is this?' I asked.

'This? Lunenburg.'

Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn,

Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain,

But only felt at night its shadowy presence.

'Where is your village? Very far from here?'

'There is no village-only scattered farms.

We were but sixty voters last election.

We can't in nature grow to many more:

That thing takes all the room!' He moved his goad.

The mountain stood there to be pointed at.

Pasture ran up the side a little way,

And then there was a wall of trees with trunks:

After that only tops of trees, and cliffs

Imperfectly concealed among the leaves.

A dry ravine emerged from under boughs

Into the pasture.

'That looks like a path.

Is that the way to reach the top from here?-

Not for this morning, but some other time:

I must be getting back to breakfast now.'

'I don't advise your trying from this side.

There is no proper path, but those that have

Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's.

That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place:

They logged it there last winter some way up.

I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way.'

'You've never climbed it?'

'I've been on the sides

Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook

That starts up on it somewhere-I've heard say

Right on the top, tip-top-a curious thing.

But what would interest you about the brook,

It's always cold in summer, warm in winter.

One of the great sights going is to see

It steam in winter like an ox's breath,

Until the bushes all along its banks

Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles-

You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!'

'There ought to be a view around the world

From such a mountain-if it isn't wooded

Clear to the top.' I saw through leafy screens

Great granite terraces in sun and shadow,

Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up-

With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet;

Or turn and sit on and look out and down,

With little ferns in crevices at his elbow.

'As to that I can't say. But there's the spring,

Right on the summit, almost like a fountain.

That ought to be worth seeing.'

'If it's there.

You never saw it?'

'I guess there's no doubt

About its being there. I never saw it.

It may not be right on the very top:

It wouldn't have to be a long way down

To have some head of water from above,

And a good distance down might not be noticed

By anyone who'd come a long way up.

One time I asked a fellow climbing it

To look and tell me later how it was.'

'What did he say?'

'He said there was a lake

Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top.'

'But a lake's different. What about the spring?'

'He never got up high enough to see.

That's why I don't advise your trying this side.

He tried this side. I've always meant to go

And look myself, but you know how it is:

It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain

You've worked around the foot of all your life.

What would I do? Go in my overalls,

With a big stick, the same as when the cows

Haven't come down to the bars at milking time?

Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear?

'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it.'

'I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to-

Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?'

'We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right.'

'Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?'

'You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg,

But it's as much as ever you can do,

The boundary lines keep in so close to it.

Hor is the township, and the township's Hor-

And a few houses sprinkled round the foot,

Like boulders broken off the upper cliff,

Rolled out a little farther than the rest.'

'Warm in December, cold in June, you say?'

'I don't suppose the water's changed at all.

You and I know enough to know it's warm

Co---Title:
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things



The house had gone to bring again 

To the midnight sky a sunset glow. 

Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,

Like a pistil after the petals go. 



The barn opposed across the way, 

That would have joined the house in flame 

Had it been the will of the wind, was left 

To bear forsaken the place's name. 



No more it opened with all one end 

For teams that came by the stony road 

To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs 

And brush the mow with the summer load. 



The birds that came to it through the air 

At broken windows flew out and in, 

Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh 

From too much dwelling on what has been. 



Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf, 

And the aged elm, though touched with fire; 

And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm; 

And the fence post carried a strand of wire. 



For them there was really nothing sad. 

But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept, 

One had to be versed in country things 

Not to believe the phoebes wept. 



---Title:
The Objection To Being Stepped On



At the end of the row 

I stepped on the toe 

Of an unemployed hoe. 

It rose in offense 

And struck me a blow 

In the seat of my sense. 

It wasn't to blame 

But I called it a name. 

And I must say it dealt 

Me a blow that I felt 

Like a malice prepense. 

You may call me a fool, 

But was there a rule 

The weapon should be 

Turned into a tool? 

And what do we see? 

The first tool I step on 

Turned into a weapon. 



---Title:
The Oft-Repeated Dream



She had no saying dark enough

For the dark pine that kept

Forever trying the window latch

Of the room where they slept.



The tireless but ineffectual hands

That with every futile pass

Made the great tree seem as a little bird

Before the mystery of glass!



It never had been inside the room,

And only one of the two

Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream

Of what the tree might do. 



---Title:
The Oven Bird



There is a singer eveyone 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. 



---Title:
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 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 so young,

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I shan't be gone long. -- You come too. 



---Title:
The Road Not Taken



Two roads die 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 other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and 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.---Title:
The Rose Family



The rose is a rose,

And was always a rose.

But the theory now goes

That the apple's a rose,

And the pear is, and so's

The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows

What will next prove a rose.

You, of course, are a rose -

But were always a rose. 



---Title:
The Secret Sits



We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. 



---Title:
The Silken Tent



She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when the sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

So that in guys it gently sways at ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole,

That is its pinnacle to heavenward

And signifies the sureness of the soul,

Seems to owe naught to any single cord,

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To every thing on earth the compass round,

And only by one's going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air

Is of the slightlest bondage made aware. 



---Title:
The Soldier



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. 

If we who sight along it round the world, 

See nothing worthy to have been its mark, 

It is because like men we look too near, 

Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, 

Our missiles always make too short an arc. 

They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect 

The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; 

They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. 

But this we know, the obstacle that checked 

And tripped the body, shot the spirit on 

Further than target ever showed or shone. 



---Title:
The Sound of Trees



I wonder about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone. 



---Title:
The Span Of Life



The old dog barks backwards without getting up.

I can remember when he was a pup.



Anonymous submission. 



---Title:
The Star Splitter



`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? 



---Title:
The Telephone



'When I was just as far as I could walk From here today, There was an hour All still When leaning with my head again a flower I heard you talk. Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say-- You spoke from that flower on the window sill- 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 on 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.' 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
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 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 over 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." 



---Title:
The Vanishing Red



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. 



---Title:
The Vantage Point



If tires 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 loggin 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 noon 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. 



---Title:
The Wood-Pile



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 tall 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 ax,

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. 



---Title:
They Were Welcome To Their Belief



Grief may have thought it was grief.

Care may have thought it was care.

They were welcome to their belief,

The overimportant pair.



No, it took all the snows that clung

To the low roof over his bed,

Beginning when he was young,

To induce the one snow on his head.



But whenever the roof camme white

The head in the dark below

Was a shade less the color of night,

A shade more the color of snow.



Grief may have thought it was grief.

Care may have thought it was care.

But neither one was the thief

Of his raven color of hair. 



---Title:
To E.T.



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

To see, if in a dream they brought of you,



I might not have the chance I missed in life

Through some delay, and call you to your face

First soldier, and then poet, and then both,

Who died a soldier-poet of your race.



I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain

Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained--

And one thing more that was not then to say:

The Victory for what it lost and gained.



You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire

On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day

The war seemed over more for you than me,

But now for me than you--the other way.



How over, though, for even me who knew

The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine,

If I was not to speak of it to you

And see you pleased once more with words of mine? 



---Title:
To Earthward



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. 



---Title:
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 snowbank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But whate'er you do tonight, bath 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. 



---Title:
Tree at my Window



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. 



---Title:
Two Look at Two



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. 



---Title:
Two Tramps in Mud Time



Out of the mud two strangers came

And caught me splitting wood in the yard,

And one of them put me off my aim

By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"

I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind

And let the other go on a way.

I knew pretty well what he had in mind:

He wanted to take my job for pay.



Good blocks of oak it was I split,

As large around as the chopping block;

And every piece I squarely hit

Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.

The blows that a life of self-control

Spares to strike for the common good,

That day, giving a loose my soul,

I spent on the unimportant wood.



The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You're one month on in the middle of May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,

A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,

A wind comes off a frozen peak,

And you're two months back in the middle of March.



A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight

And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,

His song so pitched as not to excite

A single flower as yet to bloom.

It is snowing a flake; and he half knew

Winter was only playing possum.

Except in color he isn't blue,

But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.



The water for which we may have to look

In summertime with a witching wand,

In every wheelrut's now a brook,

In every print of a hoof a pond.

Be glad of water, but don't forget

The lurking frost in the earth beneath

That will steal forth after the sun is set

And show on the water its crystal teeth.



The time when most I loved my task

The two must make me love it more

By coming with what they came to ask.

You'd think I never had felt before

The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,

The grip of earth on outspread feet,

The life of muscles rocking soft

And smooth and moist in vernal heat.



Out of the wood two hulking tramps

(From sleeping God knows where last night,

But not long since in the lumber camps).

They thought all chopping was theirs of right.

Men of the woods and lumberjacks,

They judged me by their appropriate tool.

Except as a fellow handled an ax

They had no way of knowing a fool.



Nothing on either side was said.

They knew they had but to stay their stay



And all their logic would fill my head:

As that I had no right to play

With what was another man's work for gain.

My right might be love but theirs was need.

And where the two exist in twain

Theirs was the better right--agreed.



But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future's sakes. 



---Title:
Unharvested



A scent of ripeness from over a wall. 

And come to leave the routine road

And look for what had made me stall, 

There sure enough was an apple tree

That had eased itself of its summer load, 

And of all but its trivial foliage free, 

Now breathed as light as a lady's fan. 

For there had been an apple fall

As complete as the apple had given man. 

The ground was one circle of solid red. 



May something go always unharvested! 

May much stay out of our stated plan, 

Apples or something forgotten and left, 

So smelling their sweetness would be no theft. 



---Title:
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. 



---Title:
What Fifty Said..



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.

I went to school to age to learn the past.



Now when I am old my teachers are the young.

What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.

I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.

I got to school to youth to learn the future. 



---Title:
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. 



---