:OPYRIGHT, 1930, 1939, BY HENRY HOLT & CO., INC COP YRIG HT, 1936, 1942, BY ROBERT FROST COPYR IG HT, 1946, B Y RANDOM HOUSE, INC
Random House is THE PUBLISHER OF THE MODERN LIBRARY
BENNETT A. CERF • DONALD S. KLOPFER • ROBERT K. HAAS
Manufactured m the United States of America By II. Wolff
CONTENTS
THE CONSTANT SYMBOL xv
A BOY’S WILL
The Pasture 3
Into My Own 4
Ghost House 5
My November Guest 7
Love and a Question 8
Stars 1O
Storm Fear 11
To the Thawing Wind 12
A Prayer in Spring 1 3
Flower-Gathering 14
Rose Pogonias 15
Waiting ^6
In Neglect 18
The Vantage Point 19
Mowing 2O
Going for Water 21
Revelation ?J
The Tuft of Flower?, 24
The Demiurge’s Laugh 27
A Line-Storm Song 28
October 3O
NORTH OF BOSTON
iMendingWall 35
[TheDcath of the Hired Man) ffi
The Mountain 45
A Hundred Collars 50
Home Burial) /59
The Black Cottage 64
Blueberries 69
A Servant to Servants 74
After Apple-Picking 80
The Code 82
The Generations of Men 87
The Housekeeper 97
1rhe Fear 107
The Wood-Pile 112
Good Hours 114
MOUNTAIN INTERVAL
The Road Not Taken 117
Christmas Trees 118
An Old Man’s Winter Night 121
The Telephone 123
Hyla Brook 124
The Oven Bird 125
Bond and Free 126
Birches) (jg)
Pea Brush 130
A Time to Talk 133
The Cow in Apple Time 1 34
An Encounter 135
Range-Finding 136
The Hill Wife 137
The Bonfire 141
The Last Word of a Bluebird 1 46
‘Out, Out-‘ 147
Brown’s Descent 149
The Gum-Gatherer 153
The Line-Gang 155
The Vanishing Red 1 56
Snow 158
The Sound of the Trees 175
NEW HAMPSHIRE
New Hampshire 179
A Star in a Stone-Boat 194
The Census-Taker 197
The Star-Splitter 2OO
The Axe-Helve 204
The Grindstone 2O8
Paul’s Wife 211
Wild Grapes ___ 217 The WkchofCoo
*Ah Empty Threat 228
Fragmentary Blue 23 1
vii
Dust of Snow 233
To E.T. 234
Nothing Gold Can Stay 235
The Runaway 236
The AinxWas Song 237
^Stopping by Woods on a Snowy)
^ Ev^emngJ ~” ” ™ ^3§
For Once, Then, Something 239
Blue-Butterfly Day 240
The Onset 241
To Earthward 242
Good-Bye and Keep Cold 244
*Two Look at Two 246
Not to Keep 248
A Brook in the City 249
The Kitchen Chimney 250
Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter 251
Gathering Leaves 252
Misgiving 254
Plowmen 255
On a Tree Fallen Across the Road 256
Our Singing Strength 257 The Need of Being Versed in
Country Things 259
vin
WEST-RUNNING BROOK
Spring Pools 263
The Freedom of the Moon 264
Fireflies in the Garden 265
Atmosphere 266
Devotion 267
On Going Unnoticed 268
A Passing Glimpse 269
A Peck of Gold 270
Acceptance 271
Once by the Pacific 272
Lodged 273
A Minor Bird 274
Bereft 275
Tree at My Window) /27§
^*– , … -*-— — -— ^
The Peaceful Shepherd 277
A Winter Eden 278
The Flood 279
Acquainted with the Night 280
The Lovely Shall Be Choosers 28:
West-Running Brook 284
Sand Dunes 28£
Canis Major 289
A Soldier 290
Immigrants 291
Hannibal 292
The Flower Boat 293
Dust of Snow 233
To E.T. 234
Nothing Gold Can Stay 235
The Runaway 236
The Aim Was Song 237 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy]
For Once, Then, Something 239
Blue-Butterfly Day 240
The Onset 241
To Earthward 242
Good-Bye and Keep Cold 244
Two Look at Two 246
Not to Keep 248
A Brook in the City 249
The Kitchen Chimney 250 Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter 25 1
Gathering Leaves 252
Misgiving 254
Plowmen 255
Dn a Tree Fallen Across the Road 256
3ur Singing Strength 257 The Need of Being Versed in
Country Things 259
V117
WEST-RUNNING BROOK
Spring Pools 263
The Freedom of the Moon 264
Fireflies in the Garden 265
Atmosphere 266
Devotion 267
On Going Unnoticed 268
A Passing Glimpse 269
A Peck of Gold 270
Acceptance 271
Once by the Pacific 272
Lodged 273
A Minor Bird 274
Bereft 275
Tree at MyJWindowJ ^$76
The Peaceful Shepherd 277
A Winter Eden 278
The Flood 279
Acquainted with the Night 280
The Lovely Shall Be Choosers 28:
West-Running Brook 284
Sand Dunes 288
Canis Major 289
A Soldier 290
Immigrants 291
Hannibal 292
The Flower Boat 293
The Investment 295
The Last Mowing 296
The Birthplace 297
Dust in the Eyes 298 Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight 299
What Fifty Said 300
Riders 301 On Looking up by Chance at the
Constellations 302
The Bear 303
The Egg and the Machine 305
A FURTHER RANGE
A Lone Striker 309
Two Tramps in Mud Time 312
The White-Tailed Hornet 315
A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury 318
A Drumlin Woodchuck 321
The Gold Hesperidee 323
In/Time of Cloudburst 326
AR^^sidfi^Sland 328
Departmental] (330 On~the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud
the Mind 332
The Figure in the Doorway 334
At Woodward’s Gardens 335
A Record Stride 337
Desert Places 340
Leaves Compared with Flowers 341
A Leaf Treader 342 They Were Welcome to Their Belief 343
The Strong Are Saying Nothing 344
The Master Speed 345
Moon Compasses 34^
Neither Out Far nor In Deep 347
Voice Ways 348
Design 349
On a Bird Singing in Its Sleep 350
Unharvested 351
There Are Roughly Zones 352
A Trial Run 353
Not Quite Social 354
Trovide Provide 355
Ten Mills 356
The Vindictives 359
The Bearer of Evil Tidings 363
Iris by Night 365
Build Soil—A Political Pastoral 367
A Missive Missile 378
A WITNESS TREE
Beech 383
Sycamore 383
The Silken Tent 385
xi
Happiness Makes up in Height for
What It Lacks in Length 387
TCould Give All to Time 389
Carpe Diem 390
The Wind and the Rain 391
The Most of It 393 Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be
the Same 394
Wilful Homecoming 395
A Cloud Shadow 396
The Quest of the Purple-Fringed 397
The Gift Outright 399
Triple Bronze 400
Our Hold on the Planet 401
To a Young Wretch 402
The Lesson for Today 403
Time Out 409
To a Moth Seen in Winter 410
A Considerable Speck 411
The Lost Follower 413
November 415
The Rabbit Hunter 416
A Loose Mountain 417 It Is Almost the Year Two Thousand 418 On Our Sympathy with the Under
Dog 419
xii
Boeotian 421
The Secret Sits 422
A Semi-Revolution 423
Assurance 424
An Answer 425
Trespass 426
A Nature Note 42?
Of the Stones of the Place 428
A Serious Step Lightly Taken 429 The Literate Farmer and the Planet
Venus 431
Xlll
THE
CONSTANT SYMBOL
There seems to be some such folk saying as that easy to understand is contemptible, hard to understand irritating. The implication is that just easy enough, just hard enough, right in the middle, is what literary criticism ought to foster. A glance backward over the past convinces me otherwise. The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid are easy. The Pur-gatorio is said to be hard. The Song of Songs is hard. There have been works lately to surpass all records for hardness. Some knotted riddles tell that may be worth our trouble. But hard or easy seems to me of slight use as a test either way.
Texture is surely something. A good piece of weaving takes rank with a picture as decoration for the wall of a studio, though it must be admitted to verge on the arty. There is a time of apprenticeship to texture when it shouldn’t matter if the stuff is never made up into anything. There may be scraps of repeated form all over it. But form as a whole! Don’t be shocking! ,Thc title of his first book was.
artist has to grow up and coarsen a nttle before he looks on texture as not an end in itself.
There are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these isjliat it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning, another, saying one thing in terms of another,_t]>e pleasure of ulteriority. Poetry is simply made of metaphor. So also is philosophy— and science, too ; for that matter, if it will take the soft impeachment from a friend. Every poem is a new metaphor inside or it is nothing. And there is a sense in which all poems are the same old metaphor always.
Every single poem written regular is a symbol small or great of the way the will has to pitch into commitments deeper and deeper to a rounded conclusion and then be judged for whether any original intention it had has been strongly spent or weakly lost; be it in art, politics, school, church, business, love, or marriage —in a piece of work or in a career. Strongly spent is synonymous with kept.
We may speak after sentence, resenting judgment. How can the world know anything so intimate as what we were intending to do? The answer is the world presumes to know. The ruling passion ‘n man is not as Viennese as is claimed. It is rather a gregarious instinct to keep together by minding
each other’s business. Grex rather than sex. We must be preserved from becoming egregious. The beauty of socialism is that it will end the individuality that is always crying out mind your own business. Terence’s answer would be all human business is my business. No more invisible means of support, no more invisible motives, no more invisible anything. The ultimate commitment is giving in to it that an outsider may see what we were up to sooner and better than we ourselves. The bard has said in effect, Unto these forms did I commend the spirit. It may take him a year after the act t^ confess he only betrayed the spirit with a rhynv ster’s cleverness and to forgive his enemies the critics for not having listened to his oaths and protestations to the contrary. Had he anything to be true to? Was he true to it? Did he use good words? You couldn’t tell unless you made out what idea they were supposed to be good for. Every poem is an epitome of the great predicament; a figure of the will braving alien entanglements.
Take the President in the White House. A study of the success of his intention might have to go clear back to when as a young politician, youthfully step-careless, he made the choice between the two parties of our system. He may have stood for a moment wishing he knew of a third party nearer the ideal;
but only for a moment, since he was practical. And in fact he may have been so little impressed with the importance of his choice that he left his first commitment to be made for him by his friends and relatives. It was only a small commitment anyway, like a kiss. He can scarcely remember how much credit be deserved personally for the decision it took. Calculation is usually no part in the first step in any walk. And behold him now a statesman so multifariously closed in on with obligations and answer-abilities that sometimes he loses his august temper. He might as well have got himself into a sestina royal.
Or he may be a religious nature who lightly gets committed to a nameable church through an older friend in plays and games at the Y.M.C.A. The next he knows he is in a theological school and next in the pulpit of a Sunday wrestling with the angel for a blessing on his self-defensive interpretation of the Creed. What of his original intention now? At least he has had the advantage of having it more in his heart than in his head; so that he should have made shift to assert it without being chargeable with compromise. He could go a long way before he had to declare anything he could be held to. He began with freedom to squander. He has to acknowledge himself in a tighter and tighter place. But his cour-
age asked for it. It would have been the same if he had gone to the North Pole or climbed Everest. All that concerns us is whether his story was one of conformance or performance.
There’s an indulgent smile I get for the recklessness of the unnecessary commitment I made when I came to the first line in the second stanza of a poem in this book called “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I was riding too high to care what trouble I incurred. And it was all right so long as I didn’t suffer deflection.
The poet goes in like a rope skipper to make the most of his opportunities. If he trips himself he stops the rope. He is of our stock and has been brought up by ear to choice of two metres, strict iambic and loose iambic (not to count varieties of the latter). He may have any length of line up to six feet. He may use an assortment of line lengths for any shape of stanza like Herrick in “To Daffodils.” Not that he is running wild. His intention is of course a particular mood that won’t be satisfied with anything less than its own fulfillment. But it is not yet a thought concerned with what becomes it. One thing to know it by: it shrinks shyly from anticipatory expression. Tell love beforehand and, as Blake says, it loses flow without filling the mould; the cast will be a reject. The freshness of a poem
belongs absolutely to its not having been thought out and then set to verse as the verse in turn might be set to music. A poem is the emotion of having a thought while the reader waits a little anxiously for the success of dawn. The only discipline to begin with is the inner mood that at worst may give the poet a false start or two like the almost microscopic filament of cotton that goes before the blunt thread-end and must be picked up first by the eye of the needle. He must be entranced to the exact premonition. No mystery is meant. When familiar friends approach each other in the street both are apt to have this experience in feeling before knowing the pleasantry they will inflict on each other in passing.
Probably there is something between the mood and the vocal imagination (images of the voice speaking) that determines a man’s first commitment to metre and length of line.
Suppose him to have written down ” When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes/’ He has uttered about as much as he has to live up to in the theme as in the form. Odd how the two advance into the open pari passu. He has given out that he will descend into Hades, but he has confided in no one how far before he will turn back, or whether he will turn back at all, and by what jutting points of rock
he will pick his way. He may proceed as in blank verse. Two lines more, however, and he has let himself in for rhyme, three more and he has set himself a stanza. Up to this point his discipline has been the self-discipline whereof it is written in so great praise. The harsher discipline from without is now well begun. He who knows not both knows neither. His worldly commitments are now three or four deep. Between us, he was no doubt bent on the sonnet in the first place from habit, and what’s the use in pretending he was a freer agent than he had any ambition to be? He had made most of his commitments all in one plunge. The only suspense he asks us to share with him is in the theme. He goes down, for instance, to a depth that must surprise him as much as it does us. But he doesn’t even have the say of how long his piece will be. Any worry is as to whether he will outlast or last out the fourteen lines—have to cramp or stretch to come out even— have enough bread for the butter or butter for the bread. As a matter of fact, he gets through in twelve lines and doesn’t know quite what to do with the last two.
Things like that and worse are the reason the sonnet is so suspect a form and has driven so many to free verse and even to the novel. Many a quatrain is salvaged from a sonnet that went agley. Dobson
confesses frankly to having changed from one form to another after starting: “I intended an Ode and it turned to a Sonnet/’ But he reverses the usual order of being driven from the harder down to the easier. And he has a better excuse for weakness of will than most, namely, Rose.
Jeremiah, it seems, has had his sincerity questioned because the anguish of his lamentations was tamable to the form of twenty-two stanzas for the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet has been kept to the twenty-two letters it came out of Egypt with, so the number twenty-two means as much form as ever.
But there they go again with the old doubt about law and order. (The communist looks forward to a day of order without law, bless his merciful heart.) To the right person it must seem naive to distrust form as such. The very words of the dictionary are a restriction to make the best of or stay out of and be silent. Coining new words isn’t encouraged. We play the words as we find them. We make them do. Form in language is such a disjected lot of old broken pieces it seems almost as non-existent as the spirit till the two embrace in the sky. They are not to be thought of as encountering in rivalry but in creation. No judgment on either alone counts. We see what Whitman’s extravagance may have meant ivhen he said the body was the soul.
Here is where it all comes out. The mind is a baby giant who, more provident in the cradle than he knows, has hurled his paths in life all round ahead of him like playthings given— data so-called. They are vocabulary, grammar, prosody, and diary, and it will go hard if he can’t find stepping stones of them for his feet wherever he wants to go. The way will be zigzag, but it will be a straight crookedness like the walking stick he cuts himself in the bushes for an emblem. He will be judged as he does or doesn’t let this zig or that zag project him off out of his general direction.
Teacher or student or investigator whose chance on these defenseless lines may seize, your pardon if for once I point you out what ordinarily you would point me out. To some it will seem strange that I have written my verse regular all (his time without knowing till yesterday that it was from fascination with this constant symbol I celebrate. To the right person it will seem lucky; since in finding out too much too soon there is danger of arrest. Does anyone believe I would have committed myself to the treason-reason-season rhyme-set in my “Reluctance” if I had been blase enough to know that these three words about exhausted the possibilities? No rhyming dictionary for me to make me face the facts of rhyme. I may say the strain of rhyming is less since I came to see words as phrase-ends to
xxm
countless phrases just as the syllables ly, ing, and ation are word-ends to countless words. Leave something to learn later. We’d have lost most of our innocence by forty anyway even if we never went to school a day.
TO THE RIGHT PERSON Fourteen Lines
In the one state of ours that is a shire There is a District Schoolhouse I admire — As much for anything for situation. There are few institutions standing higher This side the Rockies in my estimation — Two thousand feet above the ocean level. It has two entries for co-education. But there’s a tight-shut look to either door And to the windows of its fenestration As if to say mere knowledge was the devil, And this school wasn’t keeping any more, Unless for penitents who took their seat Upon its doorsteps as at Mercy’s feet To make up for a lack of meditation.
ROBERT FROST July, 1946
A Boy’s
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 hdre And long to know if still I held them dg&r.
They would not find me changed from him they
knew— Only more sure of all I thought was true.
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.
THE PASTURE
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young. It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
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 hdre And long to know if still I held them dg&r.
They would not find me changed from him they
knew— Only more sure of all I thought was true.
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.
\ 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, rVs sweet companions as might be had.
MY NOVEMBER GUEST
JVly 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.
TO THE THAWING WIND
C^ome with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank stream;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate’er you do to-night,
Bathe my window, make it flow >
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.
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.
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.
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.
STORM FEAR
\Vhen the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lower chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast,
‘Come out! Come outfit 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.
TO THE THAWING WIND
with rain, O loud South wester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; Make the settled snow-bank stream; Find the brown beneath the white; But whatever you do to-night, Bathe my window, make it flow > Melt it as the ice will go; Melt the glass and leave the sticks Like a hermit’s crucifix; Burst into my narrow stall; Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o’er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door.
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.
FLOWER-GATHERING
1 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 grey 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.
ROSE POGONIAS
A saturated meadow,
Sun-shaped and jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall; Where winds were quite excluded,
And the air was stifling sweet With the breath of many flowers,—
A temple of the heat.
There we bowed us in the burning,
As the sun’s right worship is, To pick where none could miss them
A thousand orchises; For though the grass was scattered,
Yet every second spear Seemed tipped with wings of color,
That tinged the atmosphere.
We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the spot, That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot; Or if not all so favoured,
Obtain such grace of hours, That none should mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.
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.
IN NEGLECT
1 hey leave us so to the -way we took,
As two in whom they were proved mistaken. That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook, With mischievous > vagrant, seraphic look, And try if we cannot feel forsaken.
THE VANTAGE POINT
If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined fc
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 bruised plant, I look into the crater of the ant.
MOWING
1 here 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 labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.
GOING FOR WATER
1 he 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 Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.
Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look, And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
A note as from a single place, A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
REVELATION
\Ve 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.
THE TUFT OF FLOWERS
1 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.
f looked for him behind an isle of trees; I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been,—alone,
‘As all must be/ I said within my heart, ‘Whether they work together or apart/
But as I said it, swift there passed me by On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,
Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night Some resting flower of yesterday’s deKght.
And once I marked his flight go round and round, As where some flower lay withering on the ground, i
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.
v Men work together/ I told him from the heart, ‘Whether they work together or apart.’
.26
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.
A LINE-STORM SONG
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swiftj
The road is forlorn all day, \Vhere 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 A
Although they are no less there: All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose. Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down, And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown. What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod? For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea’s return To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern; And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain. Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
OCTOBER
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know. Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away. Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost— For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
RELUCTANCE
vJut through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world., and descended;
I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground, Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow, \Vhen others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek, But the feet question ‘Whither?*
Ah, when to the heart of man “Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
North of Boston
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 *hat 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 \ y
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 ( EIves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.
THE MOUNTAIN
1 he 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 011 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 harm 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. °asture ran up the side a little way, \nd 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. Td take you, but Fm 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? 1
‘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 lime? Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear? ‘Twouldn’t seem real to climb for climbing it’
f l 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 Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm But all the fun’s in how you say a thing.’
1 You’ve lived here all your life?’
‘Ever since Hor
Was no bigger than a—’ What, I did not hear. He drew the oxen toward him with light touches Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank, Gave them their marching orders and was moving,
A HUNDRED COLLARS
Lancaster bore him—such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn’t see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer—a little wild.
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two
And sees old friends he somehow can’t get near.
They meet him in the general store at night,
Pre-occupied with formidable mail,
Rifling a printed letter as he talks.
They seem afraid. He wouldn’t have it so:
Though a great scholar, he’s a democrat,
If not at heart, at least on principle.
Lately when coming up to Lancaster,
His train being late, he missed another train
And had four hours to wait at Woodsville Junction
After eleven o’clock at night. Too tired
To think of sitting such an ordeal out,
He turned to the hotel to find a bed.
‘No room/ the night clerk said. ‘Unless—’
Woodsville’s a place of shrieks and wandering lamps And cars that shock and rattle—and one hotel.
‘You say “unless.”‘ 50
‘Unless you wouldn’t mind Sharing a room with someone else.’
‘Who is it?’
man.
‘So I should hope. What kind of man?’
‘I know him: he’s all right. A man’s a man. Separate beds, of course, you understand.’ The night clerk blinked his eyes and dared him on.
Who’s that man sleeping in the office chair? Has he had the refusal of my chance?’
‘He was afraid of being robbed or murdered. What do you say?’
Til have to have a bed.’
The night clerk led him up three flights of stairs And down a narrow passage full of doors, At the last one of which he knocked and entered. ‘Lafe, here’s a fellow wants to share your room.’
‘Show him this way. I’m not afraid of him. I’m not so drunk I can’t take care of myself.’
The night clerk clapped a bedstead on the foot. ‘This will be yours. Good-night,’ he said, and went
‘Lafe was the name, I think?’
‘Yes, Layfayette. You got it the first time. And yours?’
‘Magoon,. Doctor Magoon.’
‘A Doctor?’
‘Well, a teacher/”
‘Professor Square-the-circle-till-you’re-tired? Hold on, there’s something I don’t think of now That I had on my mind to ask the first Man that knew anything I happened in with. I’ll ask you later—don’t let me forget it.’
The Doctor looked at Lafe and looked away.
A man? A brute. Naked above the waist,
He sat there creased and shining in the light,
Fumbling the buttons in a well-starched shirt:
‘I’m moving into a size-larger shirt.
I’ve felt mean lately; mean’s no name for it.
I just found what the matter was to-night:
I’ve been a-choking like a nursery tree
When it outgrows the wire band of its name tag.
I blamed it on the hot spell we’ve been having. ‘Twas nothing but my foolish hanging back, Not liking to own up I’d grown a size. Number eighteen this is. What size do you wear?’
The Doctor caught his throat convulsively. v Oh—ah—fourteen—fourteen.’
‘Fourteen! You say so! I can remember when I wore fourteen. And come to think I must have back at home More than a hundred collars, size fourteen. Too bad to waste them all. You ought to have
them. They’re yours and welcome; let me send them to
you.
What makes you stand there on one leg like that? You’re not much furtherer than where Kike left you. You act as if you wished you hadn’t come. Sit down or lie down, friend; you make me nervous/
The Doctor made a subdued dash for it, And propped himself at bay against a pillow.
‘Not that way, with your shoes on Kike’s white bed You can’t rest that way. Let me pull your shoes off.’
‘Don’t touch me, please—I say, don’t touch me,
please. I’ll not be put to bed by you, my man.’
‘Just as you say. Have it your own way then. “My man” is it? You talk like a professor. Speaking of who’s afraid of who, however, I’m thinking I have more to lose than you If anything should happen to be wrong. Who wants to cut your number fourteen throat I Let’s have a show down as an evidence Of good faith. There is ninety dollars. Come, if you’re not afraid/
f Tm not afraid. There’s five: that’s all I carry.’
1 can search you?
Where are you moving over to? Stay still. You’d better tuck your money under you And sleep on it the way I always do When I’m with people I don’t trust at night.’
‘Will you believe me if I put it there
Right on the counterpane—that I do trust you?’
‘You’d say so, Mister Man.—I’m a collector. My ninety isn’t mine—you won’t think that. I pick it up a dollar at a time All round the country for the Weekly News, Published in Bow. You know the Weekly News?’
‘Known it since I was young.’ 54
‘Then you know me. Now we are getting on together—talking. I’m sort of Something for it at the front. My business is to find what people want: They pay for it, and so they ought to have it. Fairbanks, he says to me—he’s editor— “Feel out the public sentiment”—he says. A good deal comes on me when all is said. The only trouble is we disagree In politics: I’m Vermont Democrat— You know what that is, sort of double-dyed; The News has always been Republican. Fairbanks, he says to me, “Help us this year,” Meaning by us their ticket. “No,” I says, “I can’t and won’t. You’ve been in long enough: It’s time you turned around and boosted us. You’ll have to pay me more than ten a week If Fm expected to elect Bill Taft. I doubt if I could do it anyway.” ‘
1 You seem to shape the paper’s policy/
* You see I’m in with everybody, know ’em all. I almost know their farms as well as they do/
‘ You drive around? It must be pleasant work/
It’s business, but I can’t say it’s not fun. What I like best’s the lay of different farms,
Coming out on them from a stretch of woods,
Or over a hill or round a sudden corner.
I like to find folks getting out in spring,
Raking the dooryard, working near the house.
Later they get out further in the fields.
Everything’s shut sometimes except the barn;
The family’s all away in some back meadow.
There’s a hay load a-coming—when it comes.
And later still they all get driven in:
The fields are stripped to lawn, the garden patches
Stripped to bare ground, the maple trees
To whips and poles. There’s nobody about.
The chimney, though, keeps up a good brisk smoking.
And I lie back and ride. I take the reins
Only when someone’s coming, and the mare
Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go.
I’ve spoiled Jemima in more ways than one.
She’s got so she turns in at every house
As if she had some sort of curvature,
No matter if I have no errand there.
She thinks I’m sociable. I maybe am.
It’s seldom I get down except for meals, though.
Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep,
All in a family row down to the youngest.’
‘One would suppose they might not be as glad To see you as you are to see them/
‘Oh, Because I want their dollar? I don’t want
Anything they’ve not got. I never dun. I’m there, and they can pay me if they like. I go nowhere on purpose: I happen by. Sorry there is no cup to give you a drink. I drink out of the bottle—not your style. Mayn’t I offer you—?’
‘No, no, no, thank you/
‘Just as you say. Here’s looking at you then.— And now I’m leaving you a little while. You’ll rest easier when I’m gone, perhaps— Lie down—let yourself go and get some sleep. Bnt first—let’s see—what was I going to ask you? Those collars—who shall I address them to, Suppose you aren’t awake when I come back?’
* Really, friend, I can’t let you. You—may need them.* ‘Not till I shrink, when they’ll be out of style.’ ‘But really I—I have so many collars.’
‘I don’t know who I rather would have have them. They’re only turning yellow where they are. But you’re the doctor as the saying is. I’ll put the light out. Don’t you wait for me: I’ve just begun the night. You get some sleep. I’ll knock so-fashion and peep round the door When I come back so you’ll know who it is.
There’s nothing I’m afraid of like scared people. I don’t want you should shoot me in the head. What am I doing carrying off this bottle? There now, you get some sleep/
He shut the door. The Doctor slid a little down the pillow.
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 costtaught them after years.)
I meanby the woilZ^’sJhiayjngpasscd 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?
Fm just as glad she made me keep hands off,
For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
So desert it would have to be, so walled
By mountain ranges half in summer snow,
No one would covet it or think it worth
The pains of conquering to force change on. Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk Blown over and over themselves in idleness. Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew The babe born to the desert, the sand storm Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans-There are bees in this wall. 7 He struck the clapboards, Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted. We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.
You ought to have seen what I saw on my way To the village, through Patterson’s pasture to-day: 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 seenP
‘I don’t know what part of the pasture you mean.’
< You know where they cut off the woods—let me see~
It was two years ago—or no!—can it be
No longer than that?—and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall.’
‘Why, there hasn’t been time for the bushes to grow % That’s always the way with the blueberries, though: There may not have been the ghost of a sign Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine, But get the pine out of the way, you may burn The pasture all over until not a fern Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick, And presto, they’re up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjuror’s trick/
‘It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit. I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they’re ebony skinned:
The blue’s but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned/
‘Does Patterson know what he has, do you think?’
‘He may and not care and so leave the chewink To gather them for him—you know what he is. He won’t make the fact that they’re rightfully his An excuse for keeping us other folk out/
‘I wonder you didn’t see Loren about.’
‘The best of it was that I did. Do you know,
[ was just getting through what the field had to show
And over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a democrat-load
Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive/
‘He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?’
‘He just kept nodding his head up and down. You know how politely he always goes by. But he thought a big thought—I could tell by his eye— Which being expressed, might be this in effect: !< I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect, To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.” ‘
‘He’s a thriftier person than some I could name/
‘He seems to be thrifty; and hasn’t he need,
With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?
He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
They eat them the year round, and those they don’t eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet/
‘Who cares what they say? It’s a nice way to live, Just taking what Nature is willing to give, Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow.’
‘I wish you had seen his perpetual bow—
And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned/
‘I wish I knew half what the flock of them know Of where all the berries and other things grow, Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they
will crop.
I met them one day and each had a flower Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower; Some strange kind—they told me it hadn’t a name/
Tve told you how once not long after we came, I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth By going to him of all people on earth
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had For the picking. The rascal, he said he’d be glad To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad. There had been some berries—but those were all gone. He didn’t say where they had been. He went on: “I’m sure—I’m sure”—as polite as could be. He spoke to his wife in the door, “Let me see, Mame, we don’t know any good berrying place?” It was all he could do to keep a straight face.’
‘If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him, He’ll find he’s mistaken. See here, for a whim, We’ll pick in the Pattersons’ pasture this year. We’ll go in the morning, that is, if it’s clear, And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet. It’s so long since I picked I almost forget How we used to pick berries: we took one look round. Then sank out of sight like trolls underground, And saw nothing more of each other, or heard, Unless when you said I was keeping a bird Away from its nest, and I said it was you. “Well, one of us is.” For complaining it flew Around and around us. And then for a while We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile, And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out, For when you made answer, your voice was as low fas talking—you stood up beside me, you know/
( We ska’n’t have the place to ourselves to enjoy— 72
Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy. They’ll be there lo-morrow, or even to-night. They won’t be too friendly—they may be polite— To people they look on as having no right To pick where they’re picking. But we won’t complain.
You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain, The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves, Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves.’
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 soft’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. Fm 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, IVe 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 quite young. Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, Because his violence took on the form Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; But it’s more likely he was crossed in love, Or so the story goes. It was some girl. Anyway all he talked about was love. They soon saw he would do someone a mischief If he wa’n’t kept strict watch of, and it ended In father’s building him a sort of cage, Or room within a room, of hickory poles, Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling.— A narrow passage all the way around.
Anything they put in for furniture
He’d tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on.
So they made the place comfortable with straw,
Like a beast’s stall, to ease their consciences.
Of course they had to feed him without dishes.
They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded
With his clothes on his arm—all of his clothes.
Cruel—it sounds. I ‘spose they did the best
They knew. And just when he was at the height,
Father and mother married, and mother came,
A bride, to help take care of such a creature,
And accommodate her young life to his.
That was what marrying father meant to her.
She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful
By his shouts in the night. He’d shout and shout
Until the strength was shouted out of him,
And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion.
He’d pull his bars apart like bow and bowstring,
And let them go and make them twang until
His hands had worn them smooth as any oxbow.
And then he’d crow as if he thought that child’s play
The only fun he had. I’ve heard them say, though,
They found a way to put a stop to it.
He was before my time—I never saw him;
But the pen stayed exactly as it was
There in the upper chamber in the ell,
A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter.
I often think of tJig^nioathJiickof.y, bars.
It got so I would say—you know, half fooling—
‘It’s time I took my turn upstairs in jail’—
Just as you will till it becomes a habit.
No wonder L was glad to get away. Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. I didn’t want the blame if things went wrong. I was glad though ; no end, when we moved out, And I looked to be happy, and I was, As I said, for a while—but I don’t know! Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. And there’s more to it than just window-views And living by a lake. I’m past such help— Unless Len took the notion, which he won’t, And I won’t ask him—it’s not sure enough. I ‘spose I’ve got to go the road Fm going: Other folks have to, and why shouldn’t I? T almost think if I could do like you, Drop everything and live out on the ground-But it might be, come night, I shouldn’t like it, Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, And be glad of a good roof overhead. Fve lain awake thinking of you, Fll warrant, More than you have yourself, some of these nights. The wonder was the tents weren’t snatched away From over you as you lay in your beds. I haven’t courage for a risk like that. Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work, But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. There’s work enough to do—there’s always that; But behind’s behind. The worst that you can do Is set me back a little more behind. I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway. I’d rather you’d not go unless you must.
AFTER APPLE-PICKING
IVly 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 rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking 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 disappear, 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. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The 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 itj§.
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.
THE CODE
1 here were three in the meadow by the brook Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, 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 is there wrong?’
‘Something you just now said/ ‘ What did I say?’
* About our taking pains/
‘To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower? I said that more than 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 would take time, of course, 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 better 01 faster—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’s 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. Daylight 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 a rake and says, “O. K.”
Everything went well till we reached the barn
With a big jag 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.
Fd built the load and knew right 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 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 ye want him, ye 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, or I couldn’t have managed.
They excavated more. “Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.” Someone looked in a window,
And curse me if he wasn’t in the kitchen
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet
Against the stove, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so clean disgusted from behind
There was no one that dared to stir him up,
Or let him know that he was being looked at.
Apparently I hadn’t buried him
(I may have knocked him down); but my just trying
To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so’s not to meet me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in his garden:
He couldn’t keep away from doing something.’
* Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?’
No! and yet I d’jn’t know—it’s hard to say, I went about to kill him fair enough.’
‘ You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you? 1 4 Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right/
A. governor it was proclaimed this time, When all who would come seeking in
Hampshire Ancestral memories might come together. And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow, A rock-strewn town where farming has fallefrofl, And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has gone. Someone had literally run to earth In an old cellar hole in a by-road The origin of all the family there. Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe That now not all the houses left in town Made shift to shelter them without the help Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard. They were at Bow, but that was not enough: Nothing would do butthey must fix a day To stand together on the crater’s verge That turned them on the world, and try to fathom The past and get some strangeness out of it. But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain, With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that
misted.
The young folk held some hope out to each other Till well toward noon when the storm settled down With a swish in the grass. ‘What if the others Are there/ they said. ‘It isn’t going to rain/ Only one from a farm not far away
87
Strolled thither, not expecting he would find
Anyone else, but out of idleness.
One, and one other, yes, for there were two.
The second round the curving hillside road
Was a girl; and she halted some way off
To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind
At least to pass by and see who he was,
And perhaps hear some word about the weather.
This was some Stark she didn’t know. He nodded.
‘No fete to-day/ he said.
‘It looks that way/
She swept the heavens, turning on her heel. ‘I only idled down/
‘I idled down/
Provision there had been for just such meeting Of stranger cousins, in a family tree Drawn on a sort of passport with the branch Of the one bearing it done in detail-Some zealous one’s laborious device. She made a sudden movement toward her bodice, As one who clasps her heart. They laughed together. ‘Stark?’ he inquired. ‘No matter for the proof/
‘Yes, Stark. And you?’
Tm Stark.’ He drew his passport. 68
( You know we might not be and still be cousins:
The town is full of Chases, Lowes, and Baileys,
All claiming some priority in Starkness.
My mother was a Lane, yet might have married
Anyone upon earth and still her children
Would have been Starks, and doubtless here to-day.’
( You riddle with your genealogy Like a Viola. I don’t follow you/
*I only mean my mother was a Stark Several times over, and by marrying father No more than brought us back into the name/
‘One ought not to be thrown into confusion
By a plain statement of relationship,
But I own what you say makes my head spin.
You take my card—you seem so good at such things—
And see if you can reckon our cousinship.
Why not take seats here on the cellar wall
And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?*
‘Under the shelter of the family tree/ ‘Just so—that ought to be enough protection/ ‘Not from the rain. I think it’s going to rain/ ‘It’s raining/
‘No, it’s misting; let’s be fair. Does the rain seem to you to cool the eyes?’
The situation was like this: the road
Bowed outward on the mountain half-way up,
And disappeared and ended not far off.
No one went home that way. The only house
Beyond where they were was a shattered secdpod.
And below roared a brook hidden in trees,
The sound of which was silence for the place.
This he sat listening to till she gave judgment.
‘On father’s side, it seems, we’re—let me see—’ ‘Don’t be too technical.—You have three cards.’
Tour cards, one yours, three mine, one for each branch Of the Stark family I’m a member of.’
‘D’you know a person so related to herself Is supposed to be mad.’
*I may be mad/
< You look so, sitting out here in the rain Studying genealogy with me You never saw before. What will we come to With all this pride of ancestry, we Yankees? I think we’re all mad. Tell me why we’re here
Drawn into town about this cellar hole Like wild geese on a lake before a storm? What do we see in such a hole, I wonder/
‘The Indians had a myth of Chicamoztoc,
Which means The Seven Caves that We Came out ot.
This is the pit from which we Starks were digged/
‘You must be learned. That’s what you see in it?’ ‘And what do you see?’
‘ Yes, what do I see? First let me look. I see raspberry vines—’
‘Oh, if you’re going to use your eyes, just hear
What / see. It’s a little, little boy,
As pale and dim as a match flame in the sun;
He’s groping in the cellar after jam,
He thinks it’s dark and it’s flooded with daylight/
‘He’s nothing. Listen. When I lean like this I can make out old Grandsir Stark distinctly,— With his pipe in his mouth and his brown jug-Bless you, it isn’t Grandsir Stark, it’s Granny, But the pipe’s there and smoking and the jug. She’s after cider, the old girl, she’s thirsty; Here’s hoping she gets her drink and gets out safely/
‘Tell me about her. Does she look like me? 1
‘She should, shouldn’t she, you’re so many times Over descended from her. I believe She does look like you. Stay the way you are. The nose is just the same, and so’s the chin-Making allowance, making due allowance.’
‘You poor, dear, great, great, great, great Granny!’ ‘See that you get her greatness right. Don’t stint her/
‘ Yes, it’s important, though you think it isn’t. I won’t be teased. But see how wet I am.’
1 Yes, you must go; we can’t stay here for ever.
But wait until I give you a hand up.
A bead of silver water more or less
Strung on your hair won’t hurt your summer looks
I wanted to try something with the noise
That the brook raises in the empty valley.
We have seen visions—now consult the voices.
Something I must have learned riding in trains
When I was young. I used to use the roar
To set the voices speaking out of it,
Speaking or singing, and the band-music playing
Perhaps you have the art of what I mean.
I’ve never listened in among the sounds
That a brook makes in such a wild descent.
It ought to give a purer oracle.’
‘It’s as you throw a picture on a screen:
The meaning of it all is out of you;
The voices give you what you wish to hear.’
‘Strangely, it’s anything they wish to give/
‘Then I don’t know. It must be strange enough.
I wonder if it’s not your make-believe.
What do you think you’re like to hear to-day?’
‘From the sense of our having been together— But why take time for what I’m like to hear? I’ll tell you what the voices really say. You will do very well right where you are A little longer. I mustn’t feel too hurried, Or I can’t give myself to hear the voices.’
‘Is this some trance you are withdrawing into?’ ‘You must be very still; you mustn’t talk/ Til hardly breathe/
‘The voices seem to say—’ Tin waiting/
‘Don’t! The voices seem to say: Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid Of an acquaintance made adventurously/
‘I let you say that—on consideration.’
‘I don’t see very well how you can help it. You want the truth. I speak but by the voices. You sec they know I haven’t had your name, Though what a name should matter between us—
‘I shall suspect-‘
‘Be good. The voices say: Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber That you shall find lies in the cellar charred Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it For a door-sill or other corner piece In a new cottage on the ancient spot. The life is not yet all gone out of it. And come and make your summer dwelling here, And perhaps she will come., still unafraid, And sit before you in the open door With flowers in her lap until they fade, But not come in across the sacred sill—’
‘I wonder where your oracle is tending. You can see that there’s something wrong with it, Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir’s Nor Granny’s, surely. Call up one of them. They have best right to be heard in this place/
‘You seem so partial to our great-grandmother (Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.) You will be likely to regard as sacred Anything she may say. But let me warn you, Folks in her day were given to plain speaking. You think you’d best tempt her at such a time?’
c lt rests with us always to cut her off/
1 Well then, it’s Granny speaking: “I dunnow!
Mebbe I’m wrong to take it as I do.
There ain’t no names quite like the old ones
though,
Nor never will be to my way of thinking. One mustn’t bear too hard on the new comers, But there’s a dite too many of them for comfort. I should feel easier if I could see More of the salt wherewith they’re to be salted. Son, you do as you’re told! You take the timber-It’s as sound as the day when it was cut— And begin over—” There, she’d better stop. You can see what is troubling Granny, though. But don’t you think we sometimes make too much Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals, And those will bear some keeping still about.’
‘I can see we are going to be good friends.’
‘I like your “going to be.” You said just now It’s going to rain/
‘I know, and it was raining. I let you say all that. But I must go now.’
* You let me say it? on consideration? How shall we say good-bye in such a case?’
‘How shall we?’
* Will you leave the way to me?’
‘No, I don’t trust your eyes. You’ve said enough. Now give me your hand up.—Pick me that flower.’
‘ Where shall we meet again?’
‘ No where but here Once more before we meet elsewhere.’
‘In rain?’
‘It ought to be in rain. Sometime in rain. In rain to-morrow, shall we, if it rains? But if we must, in sunshine.’ So she went.
THE HOUSEKEEPER
1 let myself in at the kitchen door.
It’s you/ she said. ‘I can’t get up. Forgive mt Not answering your knock. I can no more Let people in than I can keep them out. I’m getting too old for my size, I tell them. My fingers are about all I’ve the use of So’s to take any comfort. I can sew: I help out with this beadwork what I can/
‘That’s a smart pair of pumps you’re beading there. Who are they for?’
‘ You mean?—oh, for some miss. I can’t keep track of other people’s daughters. Lord, if I were to dream of everyone Whose shoes I primped to dance in!’
‘And where’s John? 1
‘Haven’t you seen him? Strange what set you off To come to his house when he’s gone to yours. You can’t have passed each other. I know what: He must have changed his mind and gone to Gar*
land’s.
He won’t be long in that case. You can wait. Though what good you can be, or anyone-It’s gone so far. You’ve heard? Estelle’s run off.’
‘Yes, what’s it all about? When did she go? 7 ‘Two weeks since/
‘She’s in earnest, it appears/
Tm sure she won’t come back. She’s hiding somewhere.
I don’t know where myself. John thinks I do. He thinks I only have to say the word, And she’ll come back. But, bless you, I’m her mother— I can’t talk to her, and, Lord, if I could!’
‘It will go hard with John. What will he do? He can’t find anyone to take her place.’
‘Oh, if you ask me that, what will he do?
He gets some sort of bakeshop meals together,
With me to sit and tell him everything,
What’s wanted and how much and where it is.
But when I’m gone—of course I can’t stay here:
EstenVs to take me when she’s settled down.
He and I only hinder one another.
I tell them they can’t get me through the door,
though:
I’ve been built in here like a big church organ. We’ve been here fifteen years.’
‘That’s a long time To live together and then pull apart.
How do you see him living when you’re gone? Two of you out will leave an empty house/
1 don’t just see him living many years,
Left here with nothing but the furniture.
I hate to think of the old place when we’re gonfc,
With the brook going by below the yard,
And no one here but hens blowing about.
If he could sell the place, but then, he can’t:
No one will ever live on it again.
It’s too run down. This is the last of it.
What I think he will do, is let things smash.
He’ll sort of swear the time away. He’s awful!
I never saw a man let family troubles
Make so much difference in his man’s affairs.
He’s just dropped everything. He’s like a child.
I blame his being brought up by his mother.
He’s got hay down that’s been rained on three times.
He hoed a little yesterday for me:
I thought the growing things would do him good.
Something went wrong. I saw him throw the hoe
Sky-high with both hands. I can see it now—
Come here—I’ll show you—in that apple tree.
That’s no way for a man to do at his age:
He’s fifty-five, you know, if he’s a day.’
‘Aren’t you afraid of him? What’s that gun for?’
‘Oh, that’s been there for hawks since chicken-time. John Hall touch me! Not if he knows his friends.
I’ll say that for him ; John’s no threatener Like some men folk. No one’s afraid of him; All is, he’s made up his mind not to stand What he has got to stand.’
‘ Where is Estelle?
Couldn’t one talk to her? What does she say? You say you don’t know where she is.’
v Nor wanttol
She thinks if it was bad to live with him, It must be right to leave him.’
1 Which is wrong!’ ‘Yes, but he should have married her.’
‘I know.’
J The strain’s been too much for her fjl these years:
[ can’t explain it any other way.
It’s different with a man, at least with John:
He knows he’s kinder than the run of men.
Better than married ought to be as good
As married—that’s what he has always said.
t know the way he’s felt—but all the same!’
1 wonder why he doesn’t marry her And end it.’
‘Too late now: she wouldn’t have him. He’s given her time to think of something else. That’s his mistake. The dear knows my interest Has been to keep the thing from breaking up. This is a good home: I don’t ask for better. But whenl’ve said, ” Why shouldn’t they be married/*’ He’d say, ” Why should they?” no more words that that.’
‘And after all why should they? John’s been fair I take it. What was his was always hers. There was no quarrel about property.’
‘Reason enough, there was no property. A friend or two as good as own the farm, Such as it is. It isn’t worth the mortgage/
‘I mean Estelle has always held the purse/
‘The rights of that are harder to get at. I guess Estelle and I have filled the purse. ‘Twas we let him have money, not he us. John’s a bad farmer. I’m not blaming him. Take it year in, year out, he doesn’t make much. We came here for a home for me, you know, Estelle to do the housework for the board Of both of us. But look how it turns out: She seems to have the housework, and besides Half of the outdoor work, though as for that, He’d say she does it more because she likes it.
You see our pretty things are all outdoors.
Our hens and cows and pigs are always better
Than folks like us have any business with.
Farmers around twice as well off as we
Haven’t as good. They don’t go with the farm.
One thing you can’t help liking about John,
He’s fond of nice things—too fond, some would say.
But Estelle don’t complain: she’s like him there.
She wants our hens to be the best there are.
You never saw this room before a show,
Full of lank, shivery, half-drowned birds
In separate coops, having their plumage done.
The smell of the wet feathers in the heat!
You spoke of John’s not being safe to stay with.
You don’t know what a gentle lot we are:
We wouldn’t hurt a hen! You ought to see us
Moving a flock of hens from place to place.
We’re not allowed to take them upside down,
All we can hold together by the legs.
Two at a time’s the rule, one on each arm,
No matter how far and how many times
We have to go/
‘ You mean that’s John’s idea/
‘And we live up to it; or I don’t know What childishness he wouldn’t give way to. He manages to keep the upper hand On his own farm. He’s boss. But as to hens: We fence our flowers in and the hens range.
Nothing’s too good for them. We say it pays. John likes to tell the offers he has had, Twenty for this cock, twenty-five for that. He never takes the money. If they’re worth That much to sell, they’re worth as much to keep. Bless you, it’s all expense, though. Reach me down The little tin box on the cupboard shelf, The upper shelf, the tin box. That’s the one. Til show you. Here you are/
‘What’s this?’
‘Abill-
For fifty dollars for one Langshang cock— Receipted. And the cock is in the yard/
‘Not in a glass case, then?’
‘He’d need a tall one: He can eat off a barrel from the ground. He’s been in a glass case, as you may say, The Crystal Palace, London. He’s imported. John bought him, and we paid the bill with beads-* Wampum, I call it. Mind, we don’t complain. But you see, don’t you, we take care of him.’
‘And like it, too. It makes it all the worse/
‘It seems as if. And that’s not all: he’s helpless In ways that I can hardly tell you of.
Sometimes he gets possessed to keep accounts To see where all the money goes so fast. You know how men will be ridiculous. But it’s just fun the way he gets bedeviled— If he’s untidy now, what will he be—?’
J It makes it all the worse. You must be blind/ ‘Estelle’s the one. You needn’t talk to me/
J Can’t you and I get to the root of it?
What’s the real trouble? What will satisfy her?’
“It’s as I say; she’s turned from him, that’s ali/
‘But why, when she’s well off? Is it the neighbours, Being cut off from friends?’
< We have our friends. That isn’t it. Folks aren’t afraid of us/
‘She’s let it worry her. You stood the strain, And you’re her mother/
‘But I didn’t always. I didn’t relish it along at first. But I got wonted to it. And besides— John said I was too old to have grandchildren. But what’s the use of talking when it’s done? She won’t come back—it’s worse than that—she can’t. 1
< Why do you speak like that? What do you know? What do you mean?—she’s done harm to herself?’
‘I mean she’s married—married someone else/ ‘Oho, oho!’
‘You don’t believe me/
‘Yes, I do,
Only too well. I knew there must be something! So that was what was back. She’s bad, that’s all!’
‘Bad to get married when she had the chance?’ ‘Nonsense! See what she’s done! But who, but who—
‘Who’d marry her straight out of such a mess? Say it right out—no matter for her mother. The man was found. I’d better name no names. John himself won’t imagine who he is/
‘Then it’s all up. I think I’ll get away. You’ll be expecting John. I pity Estelle; I suppose she deserves some pity, too. You ought to have the kitchen to yourself To break it to him. You may have the job/
‘You needn’t think you’re going to get away, John’s almost here. I’ve had my eye on someone
Coming down Ryan’s Hill. I thought ’twas him. Here he is now. This box! Put it away. And this bill/
What’s the hurry? He’ll unhitch/
‘No, he won’t, either. He’ll just drop the reins And turn Doll out to pasture, rig and all. She won’t get far before the wheels hang up On something—there’s no harm. See, there he is! My, but he looks as if he must have heard!’
John threw the door wide but he didn’t enter. ‘How are you, neighbour? Just the man I’m after. Isn’t it Hell,’ he said. ‘I want to know. Come out here if you want to hear me talk. Til talk to you, old woman, afterward. I’ve got some news that maybe isn’t news. What are they trying to do to me, these two? 7
‘Do go along with him and stop his shouting/ She raised her voice against the closing door: “Who wants to hear your news, you—dreadful fool?’
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/
1 didn’t see it. Are you sure—’
‘ Yes, I’m sure!’
‘—it was a face?’
*}oel, Til 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 Fm right, and someone all the time-Don’t hold my arm!’
1 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, Fm 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!—1 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.’
Til 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.
4 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 ib.—
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.
1 You don’t sec—I’ve a child here by the hand. A robber wouldn’t have his family with him/
* 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.
THE WOOD-PILE
Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day,
I paused and said, ‘I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see/
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 tye 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,
The wood was grey 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 labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
GOOD HOURS
I had for my winter evening walk— No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow.
And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms and youthful faces
I had such company outward bound. I went till there were no cottages found. I turned and repented, but coming back I saw no window but that was black.
Over the snow my creaking feet Disturbed the slumbering village street Like profanation, by your leave. At ten o’clock of a winter eve.
Mountain Interval
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
1 wo roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the 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.
CHRISTMAS TREES
A CHRISTMAS CIRCULAR LETTER
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? J
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.
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 the need 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
—aiHaO ‘
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.
THE TELEPHONE
\Vhen 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 “Com^”— I heard it as I bowed/
‘I may have thought as much, but not aloudo ‘ ‘ Well, so I came”
HYLA BROOK
JDy 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.
THE OVEN BIRD
1 here is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. Ke 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.
BOND AND FREE
.Love has earth to which she clings With hills and cii cling 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. 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.
Small good to anything growing wild, They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs v/ere piled And since it was coming up had to come.
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.
A TIME TO TALK
\Vhen 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.
1 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.
THE COW IN APPLE TIME
oomething 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.
AN ENCOUNTER
Once on the kind of day called < weather breeder/
When the heat slowly hazes and the sun
By its own power seems to be undone,
I was half boring through, half climbing through
A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar
And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,
And sorry I ever left the road I knew,
I paused and rested on a sort of hook
That had me by the coat as good as seated,
And since there was no other way to look,
Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,
Stood over me a resurrected tree,
A tree that had been down and raised again—
A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
As if for fear of treading upon me.
I saw the strange position of his hands—
Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
Of wire with something in it from men to men.
4 You here?’ I said. ‘Where aren’t you nowadays?
And what’s the news you carry—if you know?
And tell me where you’re off tor—Montreal?
Me? I’m not off for anywhere at all.
Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
Half looking for the orchid Calypso/
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 Overnight ‘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.
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
As we are too sad for the other here— With birds that fill their breasts
But with each other and themselves And their built or driven nests.
HOUSE FEAR
Always—I tell you this they learned— Always at night when they returned To the lonely house from far away To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray, They learned to rattle the lock and key To give whatever might chance to be Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night, They learned to leave the house-door wide Until they had lit the lamp inside.
THE SMILE Her Word
I didn’t like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure!
Perhaps because we gave htm only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he’s got.
He’s watching from the woods as like as not.
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.
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
V/as she there.
Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave, And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.
THE BONFIRE
, 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 around 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 almost 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.
They 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 not for children—it’s for men.’
‘Now we are digging almost down to China.
My dears, my dears, you thought that—we all thought
it.
So your mistake was ours. Haven’t you heard, though, About the ships where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come 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/
THE LAST WORD OF A BLUEBIRD AS TOLD TO A CHILD
As I went out a Crow
In a low voice said ‘Oh ;
I was looking for you.
How do you do?
I just came to tell you
To tell Lesley (will you?)
That her little Bluebird
Wanted me to bring word
That the north wind last night
That made the stars bright
And made ice on the trough
Almost made him cough
His tail feathers off.
He just had to fly!
But he sent her Good-bye,
And said to be good,
And wear her red hood,
And look for skunk tracks
In the snow with an axe—
And do everything!
And perhaps in the spring
He would come back and sing.’
‘OUT,
1 he 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 the 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! ^ ne 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 ail-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 P
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.
BROWN’S DESCENT
OR
THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE
Drown lived at such a lofty farm That everyone for miles could see
His lantern when he did his chores In winter after half-past three.
And many must have seen him make His wild descent from there one night,
Between the house and barn the gale Got him by something he had on
And blew him out on the icy crust
That cased the world, and he was gone!
Walls were all buried, trees were few:
He saw no stay unless he stove A hole in somewhere with his heel.
But though repeatedly he strove
And stamped and said things to himself, And sometimes something seemed to yield,
He gained no foothold, but pursued His journey down from field to field.
Sometimes he came with arms outspread Like wings, revolving in the scene
Upon his longer axis, and
With no small dignity of mien.
Faster or slower as he chanced,
Sitting or standing as he chose, According as he feared to risk
His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,
He never let the lantern drop.
And some exclaimed who saw afar The figures he described with it,
( I wonder what those signals are
Brown makes at such an hour of night!
He’s celebrating something strange. I wonder if he’s sold his farm,
Or been made Master of the Grange/
He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;
He fell and made the lantern rattle (But saved the light from going out.)
So half-way down he fought the battle,
Incredulous of his own bad luck.
And then becoming reconciled To everything, he gave it up
And came down like a coasting child.
‘ Well-I-be-‘ that was all he said, As standing in the river road,
He looked back up the slippery slope (Two miles it was) to his abode.
Sometimes as an authority On motor-cars, Fm asked if I
Should say our stock was petered out, And this is my sincere reply:
Yankees are what they always were.
Don’t think Brown ever gave up hope Of getting home again because
He couldn’t climb that slippery slope;
Or even thought of standing there
Until the January thaw Should take the polish off the crust.
He bowed with grace to natural law,
And then went round it on his feet, After the manner of our stock;
Not much concerned for those to whom, At that particular time o’clock,
It must have looked as if the course He steered was really straight away
From that which he was headed for— Not much concerned for them, I say;
No more so than became a man— And politician at odd seasons.
I’ve kept Brown standing in the cold While I invested him with reasons;
But now he snapped his eyes three times;
Then shook his lantern, saying, He’s ‘Bout out!’ and took the long way home
By road, a matter of several miles.
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 hopeless 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 loss
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 conies 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.
THE LINE-GANG
Jriere 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 taut, 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.
THE VANISHING RED
lie is said to have been the last Red Man
In Acton. 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 laughter’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. Then 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 mill-stone 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 pit? >
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. Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise, And came up stairs 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.
SNOW
1 he three stood listening to a fresh access Of wind that caught against the house a moment, Gulped snow, and then blew free again—the Coles Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep, Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.
Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward Over his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying, * You can just see it glancing off the roof Making a great scroll upward toward the sky, Long enough for recording all our names on.— I think Til just call up my wife and tell her I’m here—so far—and starting on again. I’ll call her softly so that if she’s wise And gone to sleep, she needn’t wake to answer/ Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened. ‘Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I’m at Cole’s. I’m late. I called you up to say Good-night from here Before I went to say Good-morning there.— I thought I would.—I know, but, Lett—I know— I could, but what’s the sense? The rest won’t be So bad.—Give me an hour for it.—Ho, ho, Three hours to here! But that was all up hill; The rest is down.—Why no, no, not a wallow: They kept their heads and took their time to it Like darlings, both of them. They’re in the barn.—
My dear, I’m coming just the same. I didn’t Call you to ask you to invite me home.—’ He lingered for some word she wouldn’t say, Said it at last himself, * Good-night/ and then Getting no answer, closed the telephone. The three stood in the lamplight round the table With lowered eyes a moment till he said, Til just see how the horses are/
1 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. Fred Cole, you’re going to let him!’
‘Well, aren’t you: How can you help yourself?’
‘I called him Brother. Why did I call him that?’
‘It’s right enough.
That’s all you ever heard him called round here. He seems to have lost off his Christian name/
‘Christian enough I should call that myself.
He took no notice, did he? Well, at least
I didn’t use it out of love of him,
The dear knows. I detest the thought of him
With his ten children under ten years old.
I hate his wretched little Racker Sect,
All’s ever I heard of it, which isn’t much.
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. I should have thought, though, you could make him hear you/
‘What is he doing out a night like this? Why can’t he stay at home?’
‘He had to preach/ ‘It’s no night to be out.’
‘He may be small, He may be good, but one thing’s sure, he’s tough. 1
‘And strong of stale tobacco/
‘He’ll pull through.’
‘You only say so. Not another house Or shelter to put into from this place To theirs. I’m going to call his wife again.’
‘ Wait and he may. Let’s see what he will do. Let’s see if he will think of her again. But then I doubt he’s thinking of himself. He doesn’t look on it as anything.’
‘He shan’t go—there!’
‘It is a night, my dear.’ ‘One thing: he didn’t drag God into it.’ ‘He don’t consider it a case for God.’
‘You think so, do you? You don’t know the kind. He’s getting up a miracle this minute.
Privately—to himself, right now, he’s thinking He*!! make a case of it if he succeeds, But keep still if he fails/
‘Keep still all over. He’ll be dead—dead and buried/
‘Such a trouble!
Not but I’ve every reason not to care What happens to him if it only takes Some of the sanctimonious conceit Out of one of those pious scalawags/
‘Nonsense to that! You want to see him safe/ “You like the runt/
‘Don’t you a little?’
‘Well,
I don’t like what he’s doing, which is what You like, and like him for/
‘Oh, yes you do.
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. Let the man freeze an ear or two, I say.—
He’s here. I leave him all to you. Go in
And save his life.—All right, come in, Meserve.
Sit down, sit down. How did you find the horses? 1
Tine, fine/
t And ready for some more? My wife her Says it wont do. You’ve got to give it up/
‘Won’t you to please me? Please! If I say please? Mr. Meserve, I’ll leave it to your wife. What did your wife say on the telephone?’
Meserve seemed to heed nothing but the lamp Or something not far from it on the table. By straightening out and lifting a forefinger, He pointed with his hand from where it lay Like a white crumpled spider on his knee: ‘That leaf there in your open book! It moved Just then, I thought. It’s stood erect like that, There on the table, ever since I came, Trying to turn itself backward or forward, I’ve had my eye on it to make out which; If forward, then it’s with a friend’s impatience— You see I know—to get you on to things It wants to see how you will take, if backward It’s from regret for something you have passed And failed to see the good of. Never mind, Things must expect to come in front of us A many times—I don’t say just how many—
That varies with the things—before we see them.
One of the lies would makfe it out that nothing
Ever presents itself before us twice.
Where would we be at last if that were so?
Our very life depends on everything’s
Recurring till we answer from within.
The thousandth time may prove the charm.—That
leaf!
It can’t turn either way. It needs the wind’s help. But the wind didn’t move it if it moved. It moved itself. The wind’s at naught in here. It couldn’t stir so sensitively poised A thing as that. It couldn’t reach the lamp To get a puff of black smoke from the flame, Or blow a rumple in the collie’s coat. You make a little foursquare block of air, Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all The illimitable dark and cold and storm, And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog, And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose; Though for all anyone can tell, repose 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?’
1 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,
And show you how it’s piling up against you. You see the snow-white through the white of frost? Ask Helen how far up the sash it’s climbed Since last we read the gage/
‘It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat And its eyes shut with overeagerness To see what people found so interesting In one another, and had gone to sleep Of its own stupid lack of understanding, Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff 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.
And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,
Piling it well above the window-sills.
The snow against the window caught his eye.
“Hey, that’s a pretty thought”— those were his
words.
“So you can think it’s six feet deep outside, While you sit warm and read up balanced rations. You can’t get too much winter in the winter.” Those were his words. And he went home and all But banked the daylight out of Avery’s windows. Now you and I would go to no such length. At the same time you can’t deny it makes It not a mite worse, sitting here, we three, Playing our fancy, to have the snowliiie run So high across the pane outside. There where There is a sort of tunnel in the frost More like a tunnel than a hole—way down At the far end of it you see a stir And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift Blown in the wind. I like that—I like that. Well, now I leave you, people.’
‘Come, Meserve,
We thought you were deciding not to go— The ways you found to say the praise of comfort And being where you are. You want to stay/
Til own it’s cold for such a fall of snow. This house is frozen brittle, all except This room you sit in. If you think the wind Sounds further off, it’s not because it’s dying; You’re further under in the snow—that’s all— \nd feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dust
It bursts against us at the chimney mouth, And at the eaves. I like it from inside More than I shall out in it. But the horses Are rested and it’s time to say good-night, And let you get to bed again. Good-night, Sorry I had to break in on your sleep/
* Lucky for you you did. Lucky for you You had us for a half-way station To stop at. If you were the kind of man Paid heed to women, you’d take my advice And for your family’s sake stay where you are. But what good is my saying it over and over? You’ve done more than you had a right to think You could do—noiu. You know the risk you take In going on.’
‘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? Their bulk in water would be frozen rock In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow They will come budding boughs from tree to tree Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee, As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm.’
‘But why when no one wants you to go on? Your wife—she doesn’t want you to. We don’t, And you yourself don’t want to. Who else is there?’
‘Save us from being cornered by a woman.
Well, there’s’—She told Fred afterward that in
The pause right there, she thought the dreaded word
Was coming, ‘God/ But no, he only said
‘ Well, there’s—the storm. That says I must go on.
That wants me as a war might if it came.
Ask any man/
He threw her that as something To last her till he got outside the door. He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off. When Cole returned he found his wife still standing Beside the table near the open book, Not reading it.
‘Well, what kind of a man Do you call that?’ she said.
‘He had the gift Of words, or is it tongues, I ought to say? ;
* Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?’
‘Ov disregarding people’s civil questions—
What? We’ve found out in one hour more about him
Than we had seeing him pass by in the road
A thousand times. If that’s the way he preaches! You didn’t think you’d keep him after all. Oh, I’m not blaming you. He didn’t leave you Much say in the matter, and I’m just as glad We’re not in for a night of him. No sleep If he had stayed. The least thing set him going. It’s quiet as an empty church without him.’
‘But how much better off are we as it is? We’ll have to sit here till we know he’s safe.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’ll want to, but I shouldn’t. He knows what he can do, or he wouldn’t try. Get into bed I say, and get some rest. He won’t come back, and if he telephones, It won’t be for an hour or two.’
‘ Well then.
We can’t be any help by sitting here And living his fight through with him, I suppose.’
Cole had been telephoning in the dark. Mrs. Cole’s voice came from an inner room: ‘Did she call you or you call her?’
‘She me.
You’d better dress: you won’t go back to bed. We must have been asleep: it’s three and after/
‘Had she been ringing long? FI1 get my wrapper. I want to speak to her/
‘All she said was, He hadn’t come and had he really started/
‘She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago/ ‘He had the shovel. He’ll have made a fight/ ‘Why did I ever let him leave this house 1 /
‘Don’t begin that. You did the best you could To keep him—though perhaps you didn’t quite Conceal a wish to see him show the spunk To disobey you. Much his wife’ll thank you/
‘Fred, after all I said! You shan’t make out That it was any way but what it was. Did she let on by any word she said She didn’t thank me?’
‘When I told her “Gone,”
ll Wdlthcn/ > shcsaid,and”Wcllthcn”-likcathrcat. And then her voice came scraping slow: “Oh, you, Why did you let him go?” ‘
‘Asked why we let him? You let me there. Fll ask her why she let him.
She didn’t dare to speak when he was here
Their number’s—twenty-one? The thing won’t work
Someone’s receiver’s down. The handle stumbles.
The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
It’s theirs. She’s dropped it from her hand and gone,
Try speaking. Say “Hello!” ‘
‘Hello. Hello/ ‘What do you hear?’
‘I hear an empty room—
You know—it sounds that way. And yes, I hear— I think I hear a clock—and windows rattling. No step though. If she’s there she’s sitting down/
‘Shout; she may hear you/
‘Shouting is no good/ ‘Keep speaking then/
‘Hello. Hello. Hello. You don’t suppose—? She wouldn’t go out doors?’
Tm half afraid that’s just what she might do/
‘And leave the children?’
‘ Wait and call again.
You can’t hear whether she has left the door Wide open and the wind’s blown out the lamp And the fire’s died and the room’s dark and cold?’
‘One of two things, either she’s gone to bed Or gone out doors.’
‘In which case both are lost.
Do you know what she’s like? Have you ever met her? It’s strange she doesn’t want to speak to us/
‘Fred, see if you can hear what I hear. Come/ ‘A clock maybe/
‘Don’t you hear something else?’ ‘Not talking/
‘No/
‘ Why, yes, I hear—what is it?’ ‘ What do you say it is?’
‘A baby’s crying!
Frantic it sounds, though muffled and far off. Its mother wouldn’t let it cry like that, Not if she’s there/
* What do you make of it?’
there’s only one thing possible to make,
That is, assuming—that she has gone out.
Of course she hasn’t though.’ They both sat down
Helpless. ‘There’s nothing we can do till morning.’
‘Fred, I shan’t let you think of going out/
‘Hold on/ The double bell began to chirp.
They started up. Fred took the telephone.
‘Hello, Meserve. You’re there, then!—And your wife?
Good! Why I asked—she didn’t seem to answer.
He says she went to let him in the barn.—
We’re glad. Oh, say no more about it, man.
Drop in and see us when you’re passing.’
‘Well,
She has him then, though what she wants him for I don’t see.’
‘Possibly not for herself. Maybe she only wants him for the children/
‘The whole to-do seems to have been for nothing. What spoiled our night was to him just his fun. What did he come in for?—To talk and visit? Thought he’d just call to tell us it was snowing. If he thinks he is going to make our house A half-way coffee house ‘twixt town and nowhere—’
‘I thought you’d feel you’d been too much concerned ‘You think you haven’t been concerned yourself.’
‘If you mean he was inconsiderate To rout us out to think for him at midnight And then take our advice no more than nothing, Why, I agree with you. But let’s forgive him. We’ve had a share in one night of his life. What’ll you bet he ever calls again?’
THE SOUND OF THE 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.
New Hampshire
NEW HAMPSHIRE
1 met a lady from the South who said (You won’t believe she said it, but she said it): ‘None of my family ever worked, or had A thing to sell/ I don’t suppose the work Much matters. You may work for all of me. I’ve seen the time I’ve had to work myself. The having anything to sell is what Is the disgrace in man or state or nation.
I met a traveller from Arkansas
Who boasted of his state as beautiful
For diamonds and apples. ‘Diamonds
And apples in commercial quantities?’
I asked him, on my guard. ( Oh yes/ he answered,
Off his. The time was evening in the Pullman.
‘I see the porter’s made your bed/ I told him.
I met a Californian who would
Talk California—a state so blessed,
He said, in climate, none had ever died there
A natural death, and Vigilance Committees
Had had to organize to stock the graveyards
And vindicate the state’s humanity.
‘Just the way Steffanson runs on/ I murmured,
‘About the British Arctic. That’s what comes
Of being in the market with a climate.’
I met a poet from another state, A zealot full of fluid inspiration, Who in the name of fluid inspiration, But in the best style of bad salesmanship, Angrily tried to make me write a protest (In verse I think) against the Volstead Act. He didn’t even offer me a drink Until I asked for one to steady him. This is called having an idea to sell.
It never could have happened in New Hampshire.
The only person really soiled with trade
I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire
Was someone who had just come back ashamed
From selling things in California.
He’d built a noble mansard roof with balls
On turrets like Constantinople, deep
In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,
As if to put forever out of mind
The hope of being, as we say, received.
I found him standing at the close of day
Inside the threshold of his open barn,
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—
&nd recognized him through the iron grey
In which his face was muffled to the eyes
As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed
A drover with me on the road to Brighton.
His farm was ‘grounds,’ and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor’s at a trading station.
And he was rich, and I was still a rascal.
I couldn’t keep from asking impolitely,
Where had he been and what had he been doing?
How did he get so? (Rich was understood.)
In dealing in ‘old rags’ in San Francisco.
Oh it was terrible as well could be.
We both of us turned over in our graves.
Just specimens is all New Hampshire has,
One each of everything as in a show-case
Which naturally she doesn’t care to sell
She had one President (pronounce him Purse, And make the most of it for better or worse. He’s your one chance to score against the state), She had one Daniel Webster. He was all The Daniel Webster ever was or shall be. She had the Dartmouth needed to produce him.
I call her old. She has one family Whose claim is good to being settled here Before the era of colonization, And before that of exploration even. John Smith remarked them as he coasted by Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharf At the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himself They weren’t Red Indians, but veritable Pre-primitives of the white race, dawn people, Like those who furnished Adam’s sons with wives;
However uninnocent they may have been
In being there so early in our history.
They’d been there then a hundred years or more.
Pity he didn’t ask what they were up to
At that date with a wharf already built,
And take their name. They’ve since told me their
name-Today an honored one in Nottingham. As for what they were up to more than fishing-Suppose they weren’t behaving Puritanly, The hour had not yet struck for being good, Mankind had not yet gone on the Sabbatical. It became an explorer of the deep Not to explore too deep in others’ business. Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has. One real reformer who would change the world So it would be accepted by two classes, Artists the minute they set up as artists, Before, that is, they are themselves accepted, And boys the minute they get out of college. I can’t help thinking those are tests to go by.
And she has one I don’t know what to call him, Who comes from Philadelphia every year With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds He wants to give the educational Advantages of growing almost wild Under the watchful eye of hawk and eagle-Dorkings because they’re spoken of by Chaucer Sussex because they’re spoken of by Herrick.
She has a touch of gold. New Hampshire gold—
You may have heard of it. I had a farm
Offered me not long since up Berlin way
With a mine on it that was worked for gold;
But not gold in commercial quantities.
Just enough gold to make the engagement rings
And marriage rings of those who owned the farm.
What gold more innocent could one have asked for?
One of my children ranging after rocks
Lately brought home from Andover or Canaan
A specimen of beryl with a trace
Of radium. I know with radium
The trace would have to be the merest trace
To be below the threshold of commercial;
But trust New Hampshire not to have enough
Of radium or anything to sell.
A specimen of everything, I said.
She has one witch—old style. She lives in Colebrook.
