Robert Frost

“ Before we met and you what I had passed.
26 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. ”

“ Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust––
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. ”

“ Our snow-storms as a rule
Aren’t looked on as man-killers, and although
I’d rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep
Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,
Than the man fighting it to keep above it,
Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? ”

“ 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. ”

“ May be the thing you haven’t, yet you give it.
So false it is that what we haven’t we can’t give;
So false, that what we always say is true.
I’ll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.
It won’t lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?”
“I shouldn’t want to hurry you, Meserve,
But if you’re going––Say you’ll stay, you know?
But let me raise this curtain on a scene,
67 And show you how it’s piling up against you.
You see the snow-white through the white of frost? ”

“ I doubt if they have left us many grapes.
Before we set ourselves to right the house,
The first thing in the morning, out we go
To go the round of apple, cherry, peach,
Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.
All of a farm it is.”
“I know this much:
I’m going to put you in your bed, if first
I have to make you build it. Come, the light.”
When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
The fire got out through crannies in the stove
And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
As much at home as if they’d always danced there. ”

“ They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems
The back some farm presents us; and your woods
To northward from your window at the sink,
Waiting to steal a step on us whenever
We drop our eyes or turn to other things,
As in the game ‘Ten-step’ the children play. ”

“ And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. ”

“ Is what to make of a diminished thing.
28 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 turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace. ”

“ 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 fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
15 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. ”

“ 14 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
37 THE HILL WIFE LONELINESS (Her Word)
One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-bye;
Or care so much when they come back
With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
Too glad for the one thing ”

“ 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. ”

“ You like your fun as well as anyone;
Only you women have to put these airs on
To impress men. You’ve got us so ashamed
Of being men we can’t look at a good fight
Between two boys and not feel bound to stop it. ”

“ Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. ”

“ 33 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. ”

“ Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels,––
And children in the ships and in the towns?
Haven’t you heard what we have lived to learn?
Nothing so new––something we had forgotten:
War is for everyone, for children too.
I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t.
The best way is to come up hill with me
And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.”
45 A GIRL’S GARDEN A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing. ”

“ Short off, and died against the window-pane.”
“Brother Meserve, take care, you’ll scare yourself
More than you will us with such nightmare talk.
It’s you it matters to, because it’s you
Who have to go out into it alone.”
“Let him talk, Helen, and perhaps he’ll stay.”
“Before you drop the curtain––I’m reminded:
You recollect the boy who came out here
To breathe the air one winter––had a room
Down at the Averys’? Well, one sunny morning
After a downy storm, he passed our place
And found me banking up the house with snow. ”

“ It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings––there are no such things.
There are only middles.” ”

“ New is a word for fools in towns who think
Style upon style in dress and thought at last
Must get somewhere. ”

“ But that’s not saying––Look, Fred Cole, it’s twelve,
Isn’t it, now? He’s been here half an hour.
He says he left the village store at nine.
Three hours to do four miles––a mile an hour
Or not much better. Why, it doesn’t seem
As if a man could move that slow and move.
Try to think what he did with all that time.
And three miles more to go!”
“Don’t let him go.
Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.
That sort of man talks straight on all his life
From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf
To anything anyone else may say. ”

“ The three stood in the lamplight round the table
With lowered eyes a moment till he said,
“I’ll just see how the horses are.”
“Yes, do,”
Both the Coles said together. Mrs. Cole
Added: “You can judge better after seeing.––
I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,
Brother Meserve. You know to find your way
Out through the shed.”
“I guess I know my way,
I guess I know where I can find my name
Carved in the shed to tell me who I am
If it don’t tell me where I am. I used
To play––”
“You tend your horses and come back. ”

“ To find fused in another star.
29 BIRCHES When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. ”

“ 24 THE TELEPHONE “When I was just as far as I could walk
From here to-day,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say––
You spoke from that flower on the 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 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.” ”

“ You can’t get too much winter in the winter.’
Those were his words. ”

“ But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our very life depends on everything’s
Recurring till we answer from within.
The thousandth time may prove the charm.– ”

“ Added period after trees (Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit trees.)
Page 63: Added stanza break between go and Don’t (And three miles more to go!”
“Don’t let him go.)
Page 63: Single quote changed to double after through (“He’ll pull through.”)
Page 72: Removed extra stanza break after stumbles (The handle stumbles. The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!)
Page 74: Removed extra stanza break after wife (“Hello, Meserve. You’re there, then!––And your wife? Good! Why I asked––she didn’t seem to answer.) ”