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1 | 2018-03-01 03:42:47 | I Will Sing You One-O | 3/10/2016 | It was long I layAwake that nightWishing that nightWould name the hourAnd tell me whetherTo call it day(Though not yet light)And give up sleep.The snow fell deepWith the hiss of spray;Two winds would meet,One down one street,One down another,And fight in a smotherOf dust and feather.I could not say,But feared the coldHad checked the paceOf the tower clockBy tying togetherIts hands of goldBefore its face.Then cane one knock!A note unruffledOf earthly weather,Though strange and muffled.The tower said, 'One!'And then a steeple.They spoke to themselvesAnd such few peopleAs winds might rouseFrom sleeping warm(But not unhouse).They left the stormThat struck en masseMy window glassLike a beaded fur.In that grave OneThey spoke of the sunAnd moon and stars,Saturn and MarsAnd Jupiter.Still more unfettered,They left the namedAnd spoke of the lettered,The sigmas and tausOf constellations.They filled their throatsWith the furthest bodiesTo which man sends hisSpeculation,Beyond which God is;The cosmic motesOf yawning lenses.Their solemn pealsWere not their own:They spoke for the clockWith whose vast wheelsTheirs interlock.In that grave wordUttered aloneThe utmost starTrembled and stirred,Though set so farIts whirling frenziesAppear like standingin one self station.It has not ranged,And save for the wonder Of once expandingTo be a nova,It has not changedTo the eye of manOn planets overAround and underIt in creationSince man beganTo drag down manAnd nation nation. |
Robert Frost |
2 | 2018-03-01 03:42:48 | The Witch of Coos | 11/24/2015 | I staid the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountains, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking. MOTHER Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She could call up to pass a winter evening, But won't, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn't 'Button, button, Who's got the button,' I would have them know. SON: Mother can make a common table rear And kick with two legs like an army mule. MOTHER: And when I've done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How could that be - I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious That there's something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back. SON: You wouldn't want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother? MOTHER: Bones - a skeleton. SON: But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed Against the' attic door: the door is nailed. It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night Halting perplexed behind the barrier Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get Is back into the cellar where it came from. MOTHER: We'll never let them, will we, son! We'll never ! SON: It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of dishes Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, Another from the kitchen to the bedroom, Another from the bedroom to the attic, Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it. Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs. I was a baby: I don't know where I was. MOTHER: The only fault my husband found with me - I went to sleep before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow. The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with one leg and a crutch, Or a little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile: It wasn't anyone who could be there. The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked And swollen tight and buried under snow. The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust And swollen tight and buried under snow. It was the bones. I knew them - and good reason. My first impulse was to get to the knob And hold the door. But the bones didn't try The door; they halted helpless on the landing, Waiting for things to happen in their favour.' The faintest restless rustling ran all through them. I never could have done the thing I did If the wish hadn't been too strong in me To see how they were mounted for this walk. I had a vision of them put together Not like a man, but like a chandelier. So suddenly I flung the door wide on him. A moment he stood balancing with emotion, And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth. Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.) Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, The way he did in life once; but this time I struck the hand off brittle on the floor, And fell back from him on the floor myself. The finger-pieces slid in all directions. (Where did I see one of those pieces lately? Hand me my button-box- it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, 'Toffile, It's coming up to you.' It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Stillgoing every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, >From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs >From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, 'Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake!' 'Company?' he said, 'Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed.' So lying forward weakly on the handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light (The kitchen had been dark) I had to own I could see nothing. 'Toffile, I don't see it. It's with us in the room though. It's the bones.' 'What bones?' 'The cellar bones- out of the grave.' That made him throw his bare legs out of bed And sit up by me and take hold of me. I wanted to put out the light and see If I could see it, or else mow the room, With our arms at the level of our knees, And bring the chalk-pile down. 'I'll tell you what- It's looking for another door to try. The uncommonly deep snow has made him think Of his old song, The Wild Colonial Boy, He always used to sing along the tote-road. He's after an open door to get out-doors. Let's trap him with an open door up attic.' Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough, Almost the moment he was given an opening, The steps began to climb the attic stairs. I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them. 'Quick !' I slammed to the door and held the knob. 'Toffile, get nails.' I made him nail the door shut, And push the headboard of the bed against it. Then we asked was there anything Up attic that we'd ever want again. The attic was less to us than the cellar. If the bones liked the attic, let them have it. Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed Behind the door and headboard of the bed, Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers, With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter, That's what I sit up in the dark to say- To no one any more since Toffile died. 2o3 Let them stay in the attic since they went there. I promised Toffile to be cruel to them For helping them be cruel once to him. SON: We think they had a grave down in the cellar. MOTHER: We know they had a grave down in the cellar. SON: We never could find out whose bones they were. MOTHER: Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once. They were a man's his father killed for me. I mean a man he killed instead of me. The least I could do was to help dig their grave. We were about it one night in the cellar. Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him To tell the truth, suppose the time had come. Son looks surprised to see me end a lie We'd kept all these years between ourselves So as to have it ready for outsiders. But to-night I don't care enough to lie- I don't remember why I ever cared. Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe Could tell you why he ever cared himself- She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted Among the buttons poured out in her lap. I verified the name next morning: Toffile. The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway. |
Robert Frost |
3 | 2018-03-01 03:42:53 | Brown's Descent | 1/14/2016 | Brown lived at such a lofty farmThat everyone for miles could seeHis lantern when he did his choresIn winter after half-past three.And many must have seen him makeHis wild descent from there one night,'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything,Describing rings of lantern light.Between the house and barn the galeGot him by something he had onAnd blew him out on the icy crustThat cased the world, and he was gone!Walls were all buried, trees were few:He saw no stay unless he stoveA hole in somewhere with his heel.But though repeatedly he stroveAnd stamped and said things to himself,And sometimes something seemed to yield,He gained no foothold, but pursuedHis journey down from field to field.Sometimes he came with arms outspreadLike wings, revolving in the sceneUpon his longer axis, andWith no small dignity of mien.Faster or slower as he chanced,Sitting or standing as he chose,According as he feared to riskHis neck, or thought to spare his clothes,He never let the lantern drop.And some exclaimed who saw afarThe figures he described with it,"I wonder what those signals areBrown 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 battleIncredulous of his own bad luck.And then becoming reconciledTo everything, he gave it upAnd 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 authorityOn motor-cars, I'm asked if IShould 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 hopeOf getting home again becauseHe couldn't climb that slippery slope;Or even thought of standing thereUntil the January thawShould 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 courseHe steered was really straight awayFrom 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 coldWhile I invested him with reasons;But now he snapped his eyes three times;Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's'Bout out!" and took the long way homeBy road, a matter of several miles. |
Robert Frost |
4 | 2018-03-01 03:42:59 | The Housekeeper | 3/11/2016 | I let myself in at the kitchen door.'It's you,' she said. 'I can't get up. Forgive me Not answering your knock. I can no more 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?' '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 Garlands. 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?' 'Two weeks since.' 'She's in earnest, it appears.' 'I'm 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: Estelle's 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.' 'I 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 gone, 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.' 'Nor want to! She thinks if it was bad to live with him, It must be right to leave him.' 'Which is wrong!' 'Yes, but he should have married her.' 'I know.' 'The strain's been too much for her all these years: I 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. I know the way he's felt- but all the same!' 'I 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 when I've said, 'Why shouldn't they be married,' He'd say, 'Why should they?' no more words than 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. I'll show you. Here you are.' 'What's this?' 'A bill- 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- - ? 'It makes it all the worse. You must be blind.' 'Estelle's the one. You needn't talk to me.' '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 all.' '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.' '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's she done! But who, 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. I'll 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?' '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?' |
Robert Frost |
5 | 2018-03-01 03:43:04 | The Generations of Men | 5/16/2015 | A governor it was proclaimed this time, When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire Ancestral memories might come together. And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow, A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen off, 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 but they 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 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 fête 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?' 'I'm Stark.' He drew his passport. '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 seedpod. 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.' 'Four 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 of. 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 I 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?' '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.' '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 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.' 'I'll hardly breathe.' 'The voices seem to say- - ' 'I'm 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 see 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?' 'It rests with us always to cut her off.' '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?' 'Nowhere 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. |
Robert Frost |
6 | 2018-03-01 03:43:06 | Wild Grapes | 3/11/2016 | What tree may not the fig be gathered from? The grape may not be gathered from the birch?It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.As a girl gathered from the birch myselfEqually with my weight in grapes, one autumn,I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.I was born, I suppose, like anyone,And grew to be a little boyish girlMy brother could not always leave at home.But that beginning was wiped out in fearThe day I swung suspended with the grapes,And was come after like EurydiceAnd brought down safely from the upper regions;And the life I live now's an extra lifeI can waste as I please on whom I please.So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,And give myself out of two different ages,One of them five years younger than I look-One day my brother led me to a gladeWhere a white birch he knew of stood alone,Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,And heavy on her heavy hair behind,Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.One bunch of them, and there began to beBunches all round me growing in white birches,The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German;Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though,As the moon used to seem when I was younger,And only freely to be had for climbing.My brother did the climbing; and at firstThrew me down grapes to miss and scatterAnd have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack;Which gave him some time to himself to eat,But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed.So then, to make me wholly self-supporting,He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earthAnd put it in my hands to pick my own grapes.'Here, take a tree-top, I'll get down another.Hold on with all your might when I let go.'I said I had the tree. It wasn't true.The opposite was true. The tree had me.The minute it was left with me aloneIt caught me up as if I were the fishAnd it the fishpole. So I was translatedTo loud cries from my brother of 'Let go!Don't you know anything, you girl? Let go!'But I, with something of the baby gripAcquired ancestrally in just such treesWhen wilder mothers than our wildest nowHung babies out on branches by the handsTo dry or wash or tan, I don't know which,(You'll have to ask an evolutionist)-I held on uncomplainingly for life.My brother tried to make me laugh to help me.'What are you doing up there in those grapes?Don't be afraid. A few of them won't hurt you.I mean, they won't pick you if you don't them.'Much danger of my picking anything!By that time I was pretty well reducedTo a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang.'Now you know how it feels,' my brother said,'To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them,That when it thinks it has escaped the foxBy growing where it shouldn't-on a birch,Where a fox wouldn't think to look for it-And if he looked and found it, couldn't reach it-Just then come you and I to gather it.Only you have the advantage of the grapesIn one way: you have one more stem to cling by,And promise more resistance to the picker.'One by one I lost off my hat and shoes,And still I clung. I let my head fall back,And shut my eyes against the sun, my earsAgainst my brother's nonsense; 'Drop,' he said,'I'll catch you in my arms. It isn't far.'(Stated in lengths of him it might not be.)'Drop or I'll shake the tree and shake you down.'Grim silence on my part as I sank lower,My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings.'Why, if she isn't serious about it!Hold tight awhile till I think what to do.I'll bend the tree down and let you down by it.'I don't know much about the letting down;But once I felt ground with my stocking feetAnd the world came revolving back to me,I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.My brother said: 'Don't you weigh anything?Try to weigh something next time, so you won'tBe run off with by birch trees into space.'It wasn't my not weighing anythingSo much as my not knowing anything-My brother had been nearer right before.I had not taken the first step in knowledge;I had not learned to let go with the hands,As still I have not learned to with the heart,And have no wish to with the heart-nor need,That I can see. The mind-is not the heart.I may yet live, as I know others live,To wish in vain to let go with the mind-Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells meThat I need learn to let go with the heart. |
Robert Frost |
7 | 2018-03-01 03:43:11 | The Egg and the Machine | 3/11/2016 | He gave the solid rail a hateful kick.From far away there came an answering tickAnd then another tick. He knew the code:His hate had roused an engine up the road.He wished when he had had the track aloneHe had attacked it with a club or stoneAnd bent some rail wide open like switchSo as to wreck the engine in the ditch.Too late though, now, he had himself to thank.Its click was rising to a nearer clank.Here it came breasting like a horse in skirts.(He stood well back for fear of scalding squirts.)Then for a moment all there was was sizeConfusion and a roar that drowned the criesHe raised against the gods in the machine.Then once again the sandbank lay serene.The traveler's eye picked up a turtle train,between the dotted feet a streak of tail,And followed it to where he made out vagueBut certain signs of buried turtle's egg;And probing with one finger not too rough,He found suspicious sand, and sure enough,The pocket of a little turtle mine.If there was one egg in it there were nine,Torpedo-like, with shell of gritty leatherAll packed in sand to wait the trump together.'You'd better not disturb any more,'He told the distance, 'I am armed for war.The next machine that has the power to passWill get this plasm in it goggle glass.' |
Robert Frost |
8 | 2018-03-01 03:43:13 | Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter | 5/6/2015 | The west was getting out of gold,The breath of air had died of cold,When shoeing home across the white,I thought I saw a bird alight.In summer when I passed the placeI had to stop and lift my face;A bird with an angelic giftWas singing in it sweet and swift.No bird was singing in it now.A single leaf was on a bough,And that was all there was to seeIn going twice around the tree.From my advantage on a hillI judged that such a crystal chillWas only adding frost to snowAs gilt to gold that wouldn't show.A brush had left a crooked strokeOf what was either cloud or smokeFrom north to south across the blue;A piercing little star was through. |
Robert Frost |
9 | 2018-03-01 03:43:18 | An Empty Threat | 3/11/2016 | I stay;But it isn't as ifThere wasn't always Hudson's BayAnd the fur trade,A small skiffAnd a paddle blade.I can just see my tent pegged,And me on the floor,Cross-legged,And a trapper looking in at the doorWith furs to sell.His name's Joe,Alias John,And between what he doesn't knowAnd won't tellAbout where Henry Hudson's gone,I can't say he's much help;But we get on.The seal yelpOn an ice cake.It's not men by some mistake?No,There's not a soulFor a windbreakBetween me and the North Pole—Except always John-Joe,My French Indian Esquimaux,And he's off setting trapsIn one himself perhaps.Give a headshakeOver so much bayThrown awayIn snow and mistThat doesn't exist,I was going to say,For God, man, or beast's sake,Yet does perhaps for all three.Don't ask JoeWhat it is to him.It's sometimes dimWhat it is to me,Unless it beIt's the old captain's dark fateWho failed to find or force a straitIn its two-thousand-mile coast;And his crew left him where be failed,And nothing came of all be sailed.It's to say, 'You and I—'To such a ghost—You and IOff hereWith the dead race of the Great Auk!'And, 'Better defeat almost,If seen clear,Than life's victories of doubtThat need endless talk-talkTo make them out.' |
Robert Frost |
10 | 2018-03-01 03:43:23 | The Times Table | 3/11/2016 | More than halfway up the passWas a spring with a broken drinking glass,And whether the farmer drank or notHis mare was sure to observe the spotBy cramping the wheel on a water-bar,turning her forehead with a star,And straining her ribs for a monster sigh;To which the farmer would make reply,'A sigh for every so many breath,And for every so many sigh a death.That's what I always tell my wifeIs the multiplication table of life.'The saying may be ever so true;But it's just the kind of a thing that youNor I, nor nobody else may say,Unless our purpose is doing harm,And then I know of no better wayTo close a road, abandon a farm,Reduce the births of the human race,And bring back nature in people's place. |
Robert Frost |
11 | 2018-03-01 03:43:29 | The Last Mowing | 3/11/2016 | There's a place called Far-away MeadowWe never shall mow in again,Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:The meadow is finished with men.Then now is the chance for the flowersThat can't stand mowers and plowers.It must be now, through, in seasonBefore the not mowing brings trees on,Before trees, seeing the opening,March into a shadowy claim.The trees are all I'm afraid of,That flowers can't bloom in the shade of;It's no more men I'm afraid of;The meadow is done with the tame.The place for the moment is oursFor you, oh tumultuous flowers,To go to waste and go wild in,All shapes and colors of flowers,I needn't call you by name. |
Robert Frost |
12 | 2018-03-01 03:43:32 | Immigrants | 6/8/2015 | No ship of all that under sail or steamHave gathered people to us more and moreBut Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dreamHas been her anxious convoy in to shore. | Robert Frost |
13 | 2018-03-01 03:43:36 | On a Tree Fallen Across the Road | 3/10/2016 | (To hear us talk)The tree the tempest with a crash of woodThrows down in front of us is not barOur passage to our journey's end for good,But just to ask us who we think we areInsisting always on our own way so.She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,And make us get down in a foot of snowDebating what to do without an ax.And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:We will not be put off the final goalWe have it hidden in us to attain,Not though we have to seize earth by the poleAnd, tired of aimless circling in one place,Steer straight off after something into space. |
Robert Frost |
14 | 2018-03-01 03:43:42 | Riders | 3/10/2016 | The surest thing there is is we are riders,And though none too successful at it, guiders,Through everything presented, land and tideAnd now the very air, of what we ride.What is this talked-of mystery of birthBut being mounted bareback on the earth?We can just see the infant up astride,His small fist buried in the bushy hide.There is our wildest mount- a headless horse.But though it runs unbridled off its course,And all our blandishments would seem defied,We have ideas yet that we haven't tried. |
Robert Frost |
15 | 2018-03-01 03:43:46 | The Pauper Witch of Grafton | 3/1/2016 | NOW that they've got it settled whose I be,I'm going to tell them something they won't like:They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.Flattered I must be to have two towns fightingTo make a present of me to each other.They don't dispose me, either one of them,To spare them any trouble. Double trouble'sAlways the witch's motto anyway.I'll double theirs for both of them- you watch me.They'll find they've got the whole thing to do over,That is, if facts is what they want to go by.They set a lot (now don't they?) by a recordOf Arthur Amy's having once been upFor Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren.I could have told them any time this twelvemonthThe Arthur Amy I was married toCouldn't have been the one they say was upIn Warren at March Meeting for the reasonHe wa'n't but fifteen at the time they say.The Arthur Amy I was married tovoted the only times he ever voted,Which wasn't many, in the town of Wentworth.One of the times was when 'twas in the warrantTo see if the town wanted to take overThe tote road to our clearing where we lived.I'll tell you who'd remember- Heman Lapish.Their Arthur Amy was the father of mine.So now they've dragged it through the law courts onceI guess they'd better drag it through again.Wentworth and Warren's both good towns to live in,Only I happen to prefer to liveIn Wentworth from now on; and when all's said,Right's right, and the temptation to do rightWhen I can hurt someone by doing itHas always been too much for me, it has.I know of some folks that'd be set upAt having in their town a noted witch:But most would have to think of the expenseThat even I would be. They ought to knowThat as a witch I'd often milk a batAnd that'd be enough to last for days.It'd make my position stronger, I think,If I was to consent to give some signTo make it surer that I was a witch?It wa'n't no sign, I s'pose, when Mallice HuseSaid that I took him out in his old ageAnd rode all over everything on himUntil I'd had him worn to skin and bones,And if I'd left him hitched unblanketedIn front of one Town Hall, I'd left him hitchedIn front of every one in Grafton County.Some cried shame on me not to blanket him,The poor old man. It would have been all rightIf some one hadn't said to gnaw the postsHe stood beside and leave his trade mark on them,So they could recognize them. Not a postThat they could hear tell of was scarified.They made him keep on gnawing till he whined.Then that same smarty someone said to look- He'd bet Huse was a cribber and had gnawedThe crib he slept in- and as sure's you're bornThey found he'd gnawed the four posts of his bed,All four of them to splinters. What did that prove?Not that he hadn't gnawed the hitching postsHe said he had besides. Because a horseGnaws in the stable ain't no proof to meHe don't gnaw trees and posts and fences too.But everybody took it for proof.I was a strapping girl of twenty then.The smarty someone who spoiled everythingWas Arthur Amy. You know who he was.That was the way he started courting me.He never said much after we were married,But I mistrusted he was none too proudOf having interfered in the Huse business.I guess he found he got more out of meBy having me a witch. Or something happenedTo turn him round. He got to saying thingsTo undo what he'd done and make it right,Like, 'No, she ain't come back from kiting yet.Last night was one of her nights out. She's kiting.She thinks when the wind makes a night of itShe might as well herself.' But he liked bestTo let on he was plagued to death with me:If anyone had seen me coming homeOver the ridgepole, 'stride of a broomstick,As often as he had in the tail of the night,He guessed they'd know what he had to put up with.Well, I showed Arthur Amy signs enoughOff from the house as far as we could keepAnd from barn smells you can't wash out of ploughed groundWith all the rain and snow of seven years;And I don't mean just skulls of Roger's RangersOn Moosilauke, but woman signs to man,Only bewitched so I would last him longer.Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall,I made him gather me wet snow berriesOn slippery rocks beside a waterfall.I made him do it for me in the dark.And he liked everything I made him do.I hope if he is where he sees me nowHe's so far off he can't see what I've come to.You _can_ come down from everything to nothing.All is, if I'd a-known when I was youngAnd full of it, that this would be the end,It doesn't seem as if I'd had the courageTo make so free and kick up in folks' faces.I might have, but it doesn't seem as if. |
Robert Frost |
16 | 2018-03-01 03:43:51 | Locked Out | 3/11/2016 | As told to a childWhen we locked up the house at night,We always locked the flowers outsideAnd cut them off from window light.The time I dreamed the door was triedAnd brushed with buttons upon sleeves,The flowers were out there with the thieves.Yet nobody molested them!We did find one nasturtiumUpon the steps with bitten stem.I may have been to blame for that:I always thought it must have beenSome Hower I played with as I satAt dusk to watch the moon down early. |
Robert Frost |
17 | 2018-03-01 03:43:59 | Good Hours | 3/10/2016 | I had for my winter evening walk- No one at all with whom to talk,But I had the cottages in a rowUp 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 lacesOf 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 backI saw no window but that was black.Over the snow my creaking feetDisturbed the slumbering village streetLike profanation, by your leave,At ten o'clock of a winter eve. |
Robert Frost |
18 | 2018-03-01 03:44:01 | New Hampshire | 3/11/2016 | I 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 hadA thing to sell.' I don't suppose the workMuch 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 whatIs the disgrace in man or state or nation.I met a traveler from ArkansasWho boasted of his state as beautifulFor diamonds and apples. 'DiamondsAnd 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 wouldTalk California—a state so blessed,He said, in climate, none bad ever died thereA natural death, and Vigilance CommitteesHad had to organize to stock the graveyardsAnd vindicate the state's humanity.'Just the way Stefansson runs on,' I murmured,'About the British Arctic. That's what comesOf 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 male me write a protest(In verse I think) against the Volstead Act.He didn't even offer me a drinkUntil 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 tradeI ever stumbled on in old New HampshireWas someone who had just come back ashamedFrom selling things in California.He'd built a noble mansard roof with ballsOn turrets, like Constantinople, deepIn woods some ten miles from a railroad station,As if to put forever out of mindThe hope of being, as we say, received.I found him standing at the close of dayInside the threshold of his open barn,Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—And recognized him, through the iron grayIn which his face was muffled to the eyes,As an old boyhood friend, and once indeedA 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 shantiesRose like a factor's at a trading station.And be was rich, and I was still a rascal.I couldn't keep from asking impolitely,Where bad he been and what had he been doing?How did he get so? (Rich was understood.)In dealing in 'old rags' in San Francisco.Ob, 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 showcase,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 allThe Daniel Webster ever was or shall be.She had the Dartmouth' needed to produce him.I call her old. She has one familyWhose claim is good to being settled hereBefore the era of colonization,And before that of exploration even.John Smith remarked them as be coasted by,Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharfAt the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himselfThey weren't Red Indians but veritablePre-primitives of the white race, dawn people,Like those who furnished Adam's sons with wives;However uninnocent they may have beenIn 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 toAt 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 bad not yet struck for being good,Mankind had not yet gone on the Sabbatical.It became an explorer of the deepNot to explore too deep in others' business.Did you but know of him, New Hampshire hasOne real reformer who would change the worldSo 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 yearWith a great flock of chickens of rare breedsHe wants to give the educationalAdvantages of growing almost wildUnder 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 farmOffered me not long since up Berlin wayWith a mine on it that was worked for gold;But not gold in commercial quantities,Just enough gold to make the engagement ringsAnd marriage rings of those who owned the farm.What gold more innocent could one have asked for?One of my children ranging after rocksLately brought home from Andover or CanaanA specimen of beryl with a traceOf radium. I know with radiumThe trace would have to be the merest trace To be below the threshold of commercial;But trust New Hampshire not to have enoughOf radium or anything to sell.A specimen of everything, I said.She has one witch—old style. She lives in Colebrook.(The only other witch I ever metWas lately at a cut-glass dinner in Boston.There were four candles and four people present.The witch was young, and beautiful (new style),And open-minded. She was free to questionHer gift for reading letters locked in boxes.Why was it so much greater when the boxesWere metal than it was when they were wooden?It made the world seem so mysterious.The S'ciety for Psychical ResearchWas cognizant. Her husband was worth millions.I think he owned some shares in Harvard College.)New Hampshire used to have at SalemA company we called the White Corpuscles,Whose duty was at any hour of nightTo rush in sheets and fool's caps where they smelledA thing the least bit doubtfully perscentedAnd give someone the Skipper Ireson's Ride.One each of everything as in a showcase.More than enough land for a specimenYou'll say she has, but there there enters inSomething else to protect her from herself.There quality makes up for quantity.Not even New Hampshire farms are much for sale.The farm I made my home on in the mountains 1 had to take by force rather than buy.I caught the owner outdoors by himselfRaking.up after winter, and I said,"I'm going to put you off this farm: I want it.'"Where are you going to put me? In the road?""I'm going to put you on the farm next to it.""Why won't the farm next to it do for you?''I like this better.' It was really better.Apples? New Hampshire has them, but unsprayed,With no suspicion in stern end or blossom end Of vitriol or arsenate of lead,And so not good for anything but cider.Her unpruned grapes are flung like lariatsFar up the birches out of reach of man.A state producing precious metals, stones,And—writing; none of these except perhapsThe precious literature in quantityOr quality to worry the producerAbout disposing of it. Do you know,Considering the market, there are morePoems produced than any other thing?No wonder poets sometimes have to seemSo much more businesslike than businessmen.Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.She's one of the two best states in the Union.Vermont's the other. And the two have beenYokefellows in the sap yoke from of oldIn many Marches. And they lie like wedges,Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,And are a figure of the way the strongOf mind and strong of arm should fit together,One thick where one is thin and vice versa.New Hampshire raises the Connecticut In a trout hatchery near Canada,But soon divides the river with Vermont.Both are delightful states for their absurdlySmall towns—Lost Nation, Bungey, Muddy Boo,Poplin, Still Corners (so called not becauseThe place is silent all day long, nor yetBecause it boasts a whisky still—becauseIt set out once to be a city and stillIs only corners, crossroads in a wood).And I remember one whose name appearedBetween the pictures on a movie screenElection night once in Franconia,When everything had gone RepublicanAnd Democrats were sore in need of comfort:Easton goes Democratic, Wilson 4Hughes 2. And everybody to the saddestLaughed the loud laugh the big laugh at the little.New York (five million) laughs at Manchester,Manchester (sixty or seventy thousand) laughsAt Littleton (four thousand), LittletonLaughs at Franconia (seven hundred), andFranconia laughs, I fear—-did laugh that night- At Easton. What has Easton left to laugh at,And like the actress exclaim 'Oh, my God' at?There's Bungey; and for Bungey there are towns,Whole townships named but without population.Anything I can say about New HampshireWill serve almost as well about Vermont,Excepting that they differ in their mountains.The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;New Hampshire mountains Curl up in a coil.I had been coming to New Hampshire mountains.And here I am and what am I to say?Here first my theme becomes embarrassing.Emerson said, 'The God who made New HampshireTaunted the lofty land with little men.'Anotner Massachusetts poet said, 'I go no more to summer in New Hampshire.I've given up my summer place in Dublin.'But when I asked to know what ailed New Hampshire,She said she couldn't stand the people in it,The little men (it's Massachusetts speaking). And when I asked to know what ailed the people,She said, 'Go read your own books and find out.'I may as well confess myself the authorOf several books against the world in general.To take them as against a special state Or even nation's to restrict my meaning.I'm what is called a sensibilitist,Or otherwise an environmentalist.I refuse to adapt myself a miteTo any change from hot to cold, from wet To dry, from poor to rich, or back again.I make a virtue of my sufferingFrom nearly everything that goes on round me.In other words, I know wherever I am,Being the creature of literature I am, 1 sball not lack for pain to keep me awake.Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers:'Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.'Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,No less than England, France, and Italy. Because I wrote my novels in New HampshireIs no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.When I left Massachusetts years agoBetween two days, the reason why I soughtNew Hampshire, not Connecticut,Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this:Where I was living then, New Hampshire offeredThe nearest boundary to escape across.I hadn't an illusion in my handbagAbout the people being better thereThan those I left behind. I thought they weren't.I thought they couldn't be. And yet they were.I'd sure had no such friends in MassachusettsAs Hall of Windham, Gay of Atkinson,Bartlett of Raymond (now of Colorado),Harris of Derry, and Lynch of Bethlehem.The glorious bards of Massachusetts seemTo want to make New Hampshire people over.They taunt the lofty land with little men.I don't know what to say about the people.For art's sake one could almost wish them worseRather than better. How are we to writeThe Russian novel in AmericaAs long as life goes so unterribly?There is the pinch from which our only outcry In literature to date is heard to come.We get what little misery we canOut of not having cause for misery.It makes the guild of novel writers sickTo be expected to be DostoievskisOn nothing worse than too much luck and comfort.This is not sorrow, though; it's just the vapors,And recognized as such in Russia itselfUnder the new regime, and so forbidden.If well it is with Russia, then feel free To say so or be stood against the wallAnd shot. It's Pollyanna now or death.This, then, is the new freedom we hear tell of;And very sensible. No state can buildA literature that shall at once be soundAnd sad on a foundation of well-being.To show the level of intelligenceAmong us: it was just a Warren farmerWhose horse had pulled him short up in the roadBy me, a stranger. This is what he said,From nothing but embarrassment and wantOf anything more sociable to say:'You hear those bound dogs sing on Moosilauke?Well, they remind me of the hue and cryWe've heard against the Mid - Victorians And never rightly understood till BryanRetired from politics and joined the chorus.The matter with the Mid-VictoriansSeems to have been a man named Joh n L. Darwin.''Go 'long,' I said to him, he to his horse.I knew a man who failing as a farmerBurned down his farmhouse for the fire insurance,And spent the proceeds on a telescopeTo satisfy a lifelong curiosityAbout our place among the infinities.And how was that for otherworldliness?If I must choose which I would elevate —The people or the already lofty mountainsI'd elevate the already lofty mountainsThe only fault I find with old New Hampshire Is that her mountains aren't quite high enough.I was not always so; I've come to be so.How, to my sorrow, how have I attainedA height from which to look down criticalOn mountains? What has given me assuranceTo say what height becomes New Hampshire mountains,Or any mountains? Can it be some strengthI feel, as of an earthquake in my back,To heave them higher to the morning star?Can it be foreign travel in the Alps?Or having seen and credited a momentThe solid molding of vast peaks of cloudBehind the pitiful realityOf Lincoln, Lafayette, and Liberty?Or some such sense as says bow high shall jetThe fountain in proportion to the basin?No, none of these has raised me to my throneOf intellectual dissatisfaction,But the sad accident of having seenOur actual mountains given in a mapOf early times as twice the height they are—Ten thousand feet instead of only five—Which shows how sad an accident may be.Five thousand is no longer high enough.Whereas I never had a good ideaAbout improving people in the world,Here I am overfertile in suggestion,And cannot rest from planning day or nightHow high I'd thrust the peaks in summer snowTo tap the upper sky and draw a flowOf frosty night air on the vale belowDown from the stars to freeze the dew as starry.The more the sensibilitist I amThe more I seem to want my mountains wild;The way the wiry gang-boss liked the logjam. After he'd picked the lock and got it started,He dodged a log that lifted like an armAgainst the sky to break his back for him,Then came in dancing, skipping with his lifeAcross the roar and chaos, and the words We saw him say along the zigzag journeyWere doubtless as the words we heard him sayOn coming nearer: 'Wasn't she an i-dealSon-of-a-bitch? You bet she was an i-deal.'For all her mountains fall a little short,Her people not quite short enough for Art,She's still New Hampshire; a most restful state.Lately in converse with a New York alecAbout the new school of the pseudo-phallic,I found myself in a close corner whereI bad to make an almost funny choice.'Choose you which you will be—a prude, or puke,Mewling and puking in the public arms.''Me for the hills where I don't have to choose."'But if you bad to choose, which would you be?' 1 wouldn't be a prude afraid of nature.I know a man who took a double axAnd went alone against a grove of trees;But his heart failing him, he dropped the axAnd ran for shelter quoting Matthew Arnold:''Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood':There s been enough shed without shedding mine.Remember Birnam Wood! The wood's in flux!'He had a special terror of the fluxThat showed itself in dendrophobia.The only decent tree had been to millAnd educated into boards, be said.He knew too well for any earthly useThe line where man leaves off and nature starts.And never overstepped it save in dreams.He stood on the safe side of the line talking—Which is sheer Matthew Arnoldism,The cult of one who owned himself 'a foiledCircuitous wanderer,' and 'took dejectedlyHis seat upon the intellectual throne'—Agreed in 'frowning on these improvisedAltars the woods are full of nowadays,Again as in the days when Ahaz sinnedBy worship under green trees in the open.Scarcely a mile but that I come on one,A black-checked stone and stick of rain-washed charcoal.Even to say the groves were God's first templesComes too near to Ahaz' sin for safety.Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred.But here is not a question of what's sacred;Rather of what to face or run away from.I'd hate to be a runaway from nature.And neither would I choose to be a pukeWho cares not what be does in company,And when he can't do anything, falls backOn words, and tries his worst to make words speakLouder than actions, and sometimes achieves it.It seems a narrow choice the age insists on8ow about being a good Greek, for instance)That course, they tell me, isn't offered this year.'Come, but this isn't choosing—puke or prude?'Well, if I have to choose one or the other,I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmerWith an income in cash of, say, a thousand(From, say, a publisher in New York City). It's restful to arrive at a decision,And restful just to think about New Hampshire.At present I am living in Vermont. |
Robert Frost |
19 | 2018-03-01 03:44:06 | The Kitchen Chimney | 1/27/2016 | Builder, in building the little house,In every way you may please yourself;But please please me in the kitchen chimney:Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.However far you must go for bricks,Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound,But me enough for a full-length chimney,And build the chimney clear from the ground.It's not that I'm greatly afraid of fire,But I never heard of a house that throve(And I know of one that didn't thrive)Where the chimney started above the stove.And I dread the ominous stain of tarThat there always is on the papered walls,And the smell of fire drowned in rainThat there always is when the chimney's false.A shelf's for a clock or vase or picture,But I don't see why it should have to bearA chimney that only would serve to remind meOf castles I used to build in air. |
Robert Frost |
20 | 2018-03-01 03:44:12 | The Birthplace | 5/14/2015 | Here further up the mountain slopeThan there was every any hope,My father built, enclosed a spring,Strung chains of wall round everything,Subdued the growth of earth to grass,And brought our various lives to pass.A dozen girls and boys we were.The mountain seemed to like the stir,And made of us a little while- With always something in her smile.Today she wouldn't know our name.(No girl's, of course, has stayed the same.)The mountain pushed us off her knees.And now her lap is full of trees. |
Robert Frost |
21 | 2018-03-01 03:44:15 | Directive | 6/26/2015 | Back out of all this now too much for us,Back in a time made simple by the lossOf detail, burned, dissolved, and broken offLike graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,There is a house that is no more a houseUpon a farm that is no more a farmAnd in a town that is no more a town.The road there, if you'll let a guide direct youWho only has at heart your getting lost,May seem as if it should have been a quarry -Great monolithic knees the former townLong since gave up pretense of keeping covered.And there's a story in a book about it:Besides the wear of iron wagon wheelsThe ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,The chisel work of an enormous GlacierThat braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.You must not mind a certain coolness from himStill said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.Nor need you mind the serial ordealOf being watched from forty cellar holesAs if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.As for the woods' excitement over youThat sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,Charge that to upstart inexperience.Where were they all not twenty years ago?They think too much of having shaded outA few old pecker-fretted apple trees.Make yourself up a cheering song of howSomeone's road home from work this once was,Who may be just ahead of you on footOr creaking with a buggy load of grain.The height of the adventure is the heightOf country where two village cultures fadedInto each other. Both of them are lost.And if you're lost enough to find yourselfBy now, pull in your ladder road behind youAnd put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.Then make yourself at home. The only fieldNow left's no bigger than a harness gall.First there's the children's house of make-believe,Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,The playthings in the playhouse of the children.Weep for what little things could make them glad.Then for the house that is no more a house,But only a belilaced cellar hole,Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.Your destination and your destiny'sA brook that was the water of the house,Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,Too lofty and original to rage.(We know the valley streams that when arousedWill leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)I have kept hidden in the instep archOf an old cedar at the watersideA broken drinking goblet like the GrailUnder a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)Here are your waters and your watering place.Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. |
Robert Frost |
22 | 2018-03-01 03:44:17 | Snow | 2/23/2016 | The three stood listening to a fresh accessOf wind that caught against the house a moment,Gulped snow, and then blew free again-the ColesDressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep,Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backwardOver his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying,'You can just see it glancing off the roofMaking a great scroll upward toward the sky,Long enough for recording all our names on.-I think I'll just call up my wife and tell herI'm here-so far-and starting on again.I'll call her softly so that if she's wiseAnd 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 hereBefore 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 beSo 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 itLike darlings, both of them. They're in the barn.-My dear, I'm coming just the same. I didn'tCall 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 tableWith lowered eyes a moment till he said,'I'll just see how the horses are.''Yes, do,'Both the Coles said together. Mrs. ColeAdded: 'You can judge better after seeing.-I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,Brother Meserve. You know to find your wayOut through the shed.''I guess I know my way,I guess I know where I can find my nameCarved in the shed to tell me who I amIf it don't tell me where I am. I usedTo 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 leastI didn't use it out of love of him,The dear knows. I detest the thought of himWith 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 hourOr not much better. Why, it doesn't seemAs 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 lifeFrom the last thing he said himself, stone deafTo 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.''And strong of stale tobacco.''He'll pull through.''You only say so. Not another houseOr shelter to put into from this placeTo 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 himselfHe 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 thinkingHe'll 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 careWhat happens to him if it only takesSome of the sanctimonious conceitOut 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 whatYou 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 onTo impress men. You've got us so ashamedOf being men we can't look at a good fightBetween 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 inAnd save his life.- All right, come in, Meserve.Sit down, sit down. How did you find the horses?''Fine, fine.''And ready for some more? My wife hereSays it won't 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 lampOr something not far from it on the table.By straightening out and lifting a forefinger,He pointed with his hand from where it layLike a white crumpled spider on his knee:'That leaf there in your open book! It movedJust 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 thingsIt wants to see how you will take, if backwardIt's from regret for something you have passedAnd failed to see the good of. Never mind,Things must expect to come in front of usA many times-I don't say just how many-That varies with the things-before we see them.One of the lies would make it out that nothingEver presents itself before us twice.Where would we be at last if that were so?Our very life depends on everything'sRecurring 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 poisedA thing as that. It couldn't reach the lampTo 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 allThe 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, reposeMay be the thing you haven't, yet you give it.So false it is that what we haven't we can't give;So false, that what we always say is true.I'll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.It won't lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?''I shouldn't want to hurry you, Meserve,But if you're going- Say you'll stay, you know?But let me raise this curtain on a scene,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 climbedSince last we read the gage.''It looks as ifSome pallid thing had squashed its features flatAnd its eyes shut with overeagernessTo see what people found so interestingIn one another, and had gone to sleepOf its own stupid lack of understanding,Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuffShort off, and died against the window-pane.''Brother Meserve, take care, you'll scare yourselfMore than you will us with such nightmare talk.It's you it matters to, because it's youWho 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 hereTo breathe the air one winter-had a roomDown at the Averys'? Well, one sunny morningAfter a downy storm, he passed our placeAnd 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 allBut 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 makesIt not a mite worse, sitting here, we three,Playing our fancy, to have the snowline runSo high across the pane outside. There whereThere is a sort of tunnel in the frostMore like a tunnel than a hole-way downAt the far end of it you see a stirAnd quiver like the frayed edge of the driftBlown 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 comfortAnd being where you are. You want to stay.''I'll own it's cold for such a fall of snow.This house is frozen brittle, all exceptThis room you sit in. If you think the windSounds further off, it's not because it's dying;You're further under in the snow-that's all-And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dustIt bursts against us at the chimney mouth,And at the eaves. I like it from insideMore than I shall out in it. But the horsesAre 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 youYou had us for a half-way stationTo stop at. If you were the kind of manPaid heed to women, you'd take my adviceAnd 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 thinkYou could do-now. You know the risk you takeIn going on.''Our snow-storms as a ruleAren't looked on as man-killers, and althoughI'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleepUnder 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 notIn nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?Their bulk in water would be frozen rockIn no time out to-night. And yet to-morrowThey will come budding boughs from tree to treeFlirting 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 inThe pause right there, she thought the dreaded wordWas 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 somethingTo 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 standingBeside the table near the open book,Not reading it.'Well, what kind of a manDo you call that?' she said.'He had the giftOf words, or is it tongues, I ought to say?''Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?''Or disregarding people's civil questions-What? We've found out in one hour more about himThan we had seeing him pass by in the roadA 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 youMuch say in the matter, and I'm just as gladWe're not in for a night of him. No sleepIf 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 hereAnd 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? I'll 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!''Don't begin that. You did the best you couldTo keep him-though perhaps you didn't quiteConceal a wish to see him show the spunkTo disobey you. Much his wife'll thank you.''Fred, after all I said! You shan't make outThat it was any way but what it was.Did she let on by any word she saidShe didn't thank me?''When I told her 'Gone,''Well then,' she said, and 'Well then'-like a threat.And then her voice came scraping slow: 'Oh, you,Why did you let him go'?''Asked why we let him?You let me there. I'll 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?''I'm 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 doorWide open and the wind's blown out the lampAnd the fire's died and the room's dark and cold?''One of two things, either she's gone to bedOr 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 downHelpless. '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 forI 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 houseA halfway 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 inconsiderateTo rout us out to think for him at midnightAnd 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?' |
Robert Frost |
23 | 2018-03-01 03:44:23 | The Investment | 3/11/2016 | Over back where they speak of life as staying('You couldn't call it living, for it ain't'),There was an old, old house renewed with paint,And in it a piano loudly playing.Out in the plowed ground in the cold a digger,Among unearthed potatoes standing still,Was counting winter dinners, one a hill,With half an ear to the piano's vigor.All that piano and new paint back there,Was it some money suddenly come into?Or some extravagance young love had been to?Or old love on an impulse not to care- Not to sink under being man and wife,But get some color and music out of life? |
Robert Frost |
24 | 2018-03-01 03:44:26 | Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight | 3/10/2016 | When I spread out my hand here today,I catch no more than a rayTo feel of between thumb and fingers;No lasting effect of it lingers.There was one time and only the oneWhen dust really took in the sun;And from that one intake of fireAll creatures still warmly suspire.And if men have watched a long timeAnd never seen sun-smitten slimeAgain come to life and crawl off,We not be too ready to scoff.God once declared he was trueAnd then took the veil and withdrew,And remember how final a hushThen descended of old on the bush.God once spoke to people by name.The sun once imparted its flame.One impulse persists as our breath;The other persists as our faith. |
Robert Frost |
25 | 2018-03-01 03:44:28 | A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books | 3/5/2016 | Old Davis owned a solid mica mountainIn Dalton that would someday make his fortune.There'd been some Boston people out to see it:And experts said that deep down in the mountainThe mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.He'd like to take me there and show it to me.'I'll tell you what you show me. You rememberYou said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman,The early Mormons made a settlementAnd built a stone baptismal font outdoors-But Smith, or someone, called them off the mountainTo go West to a worse fight with the desert.You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font.Well, take me there.'Someday I will.''Today.''Huh, that old bathtub, what is that to see?Let's talk about it.''Let's go see the place.''To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do:I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer,And both of our united strengths, to do it.''You've lost it, then?''Not so but I can find it.No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it.The mountain may have shifted since I saw itIn eighty-five.''As long ago as that?''If I remember rightly, it had sprungA leak and emptied then. And forty yearsCan do a good deal to bad masonry.You won't see any Mormon swimming in it.But you have said it, and we're off to find it.Old as I am, I'm going to let myselfBe dragged by you all over everywhere- ''I thought you were a guide.''I am a guide,And that's why I can't decently refuse you.'We made a day of it out of the world,Ascending to descend to reascend.The old man seriously took his bearings,And spoke his doubts in every open place.We came out on a look-off where we facedA cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted,Or stained by vegetation from above,A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.'Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain,At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle.''I won't accept the substitute. It's empty.''So's everything.''I want my fountain.''I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty.And anyway this tells me where I am.''Hadn't you long suspected where you were?''You mean miles from that Mormon settlement?Look here, you treat your guide with due respectIf you don't want to spend the night outdoors.I vow we must be near the place from whereThe two converging slides, the avalanches,On Marshall, look like donkey's ears.We may as well see that and save the day.''Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?''For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature?You don't like nature. All you like is books.What signify a donkey's cars and bottle,However natural? Give you your books!Well then, right here is where I show you books.Come straight down off this mountain just as fastAs we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet.It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather.'Be ready, I thought, for almost anything.We struck a road I didn't recognize,But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoesIn dust once more. We followed this a mile,Perhaps, to where it ended at a houseI didn't know was there. It was the kindTo bring me to for broad-board paneling.I never saw so good a house deserted.'Excuse me if I ask you in a windowThat happens to be broken, Davis said.'The outside doors as yet have held against us.I want to introduce you to the peopleWho used to live here. They were Robinsons.You must have heard of Clara Robinson,The poetess who wrote the book of versesAnd had it published. It was all aboutThe posies on her inner windowsill,And the birds on her outer windowsill,And how she tended both, or had them tended:She never tended anything herself.She was 'shut in' for life. She lived her wholeLife long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.I'll show You how she had her sills extendedTo entertain the birds and hold the flowers.Our business first's up attic with her books.'We trod uncomfortably on crunching glassThrough a house stripped of everythingExcept, it seemed, the poetess's poems.Books, I should say!- if books are what is needed.A whole edition in a packing caseThat, overflowing like a horn of plenty,Or like the poetess's heart of love,Had spilled them near the window, toward the lightWhere driven rain had wet and swollen them.Enough to stock a village library-Unfortunately all of one kind, though.They bad been brought home from some publisherAnd taken thus into the family.Boys and bad hunters had known what to doWith stone and lead to unprotected glass:Shatter it inward on the unswept floors.How had the tender verse escaped their outrage?By being invisible for what it was,Or else by some remoteness that defied themTo find out what to do to hurt a poem.Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,To send it sailing out the attic windowTill it caught wind and, opening out its covers,Tried to improve on sailing like a tileBy flying like a bird (silent in flight,But all the burden of its body song),Only to tumble like a stricken bird,And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved.Books were not thrown irreverently about.They simply lay where someone now and then,Having tried one, had dropped it at his feetAnd left it lying where it fell rejected.Here were all those the poetess's lifeHad been too short to sell or give away.'Take one,' Old Davis bade me graciously.'Why not take two or three?''Take all you want.'Good-looking books like that.' He picked one freshIn virgin wrapper from deep in the box,And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.He read in one and I read in another,Both either looking for or finding something.The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.I was soon satisfied for the time being.All the way home I kept rememberingThe small book in my pocket. It was there.The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heavenAt having eased her heart of one more copy-Legitimately. My demand upon her,Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.In time she would be rid of all her books. |
Robert Frost |
26 | 2018-03-01 03:44:32 | Misgiving | 7/11/2015 | All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind!'The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;But a sleep oppresses them as they go,And they end by bidding them as they go,And they end by bidding him stay with them.Since ever they flung abroad in springThe leaves had promised themselves this flight,Who now would fain seek sheltering wall,Or thicket, or hollow place for the night.And now they answer his summoning blastWith an ever vaguer and vaguer stir,Or at utmost a little reluctant whirlThat drops them no further than where they were.I only hope that when I am freeAs they are free to go in questOf the knowledge beyond the bounds of lifeIt may not seem better to me to rest. |
Robert Frost |
27 | 2018-03-01 03:44:38 | Pea Brush | 3/11/2016 | I WALKED down alone Sunday after churchTo the place where John has been cutting treesTo see for myself about the birchHe said I could have to bush my peas.The sun in the new-cut narrow gapWas hot enough for the first of May,And stifling hot with the odor of sapFrom stumps still bleeding their life away.The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrillWherever the ground was low and wet,The minute they heard my step went stillTo watch me and see what I came to get.Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—All fresh and sound from the recent axe.Time someone came with cart and pairAnd got them off the wild flower's backs.They might be good for garden thingsTo curl a little finger round,The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings,And lift themselves up off the ground.Small good to anything growing wild,They were crooking many a trilliumThat had budded before the boughs were piledAnd since it was coming up had to come. |
Robert Frost |
28 | 2018-03-01 03:44:43 | A Winter Eden | 3/11/2016 | A winter garden in an alder swamp,Where conies now come out to sun and romp,As near a paradise as it can beAnd not melt snow or start a dormant tree.It lifts existence on a plane of snowOne level higher than the earth below,One level nearer heaven overhead,And last year's berries shining scarlet red.It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beastWhere he can stretch and hold his highest featOn some wild apple tree's young tender bark,What well may prove the year's high girdle mark.So near to paradise all pairing ends:Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,Content with bud-inspecting. They presumeTo say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.A feather-hammer gives a double knock.This Eden day is done at two o'clock.An hour of winter day might seem too shortTo make it worth life's while to wake and sport. |
Robert Frost |
29 | 2018-03-01 03:44:48 | The Flood | 12/10/2015 | Blood has been harder to dam back than water.Just when we think we have it impounded safeBehind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;But power of blood itself releases blood.It goes by might of being such a floodHeld high at so unnatural a level.It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.weapons of war and implements of peaceAre but the points at which it finds release.And now it is once more the tidal waveThat when it has swept by leaves summits stained.Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained. |
Robert Frost |
30 | 2018-03-01 03:44:52 | Atmosphere | 3/11/2016 | Inscription for a Garden WallWinds blow the open grassy places bleak;But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,They eddy over it too toppling weakTo blow the earth or anything self-clear;Moisture and color and odor thicken here.The hours of daylight gather atmosphere. | Robert Frost |
31 | 2018-03-01 03:44:57 | Sand Dunes | 3/10/2016 | Sea waves are green and wet,But up from where they die,Rise others vaster yet,And those are brown and dry.They are the sea made landTo come at the fisher town,And bury in solid sandThe men she could not drown.She may know cove and cape,But she does not know mankindIf by any change of shape,She hopes to cut off mind.Men left her a ship to sink:They can leave her a hut as well;And be but more free to thinkFor the one more cast-off shell. |
Robert Frost |
32 | 2018-03-01 03:45:02 | In The Home Stretch | 1/9/2015 | SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and lookedOver the sink out through a dusty windowAt weeds the water from the sink made tall.She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.Behind her was confusion in the room,Of chairs turned upside down to sit like peopleIn other chairs, and something, come to look,For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.And now and then a smudged, infernal faceLooked in a door behind her and addressedHer back. She always answered without turning."Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?""Put it on top of something that's on topOf something else," she laughed. "Oh, put it whereYou can to-night, and go. It's almost dark;You must be getting started back to town."Another blackened face thrust in and lookedAnd smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently,"What are you seeing out the window, lady?""Never was I beladied so before.Would evidence of having been called ladyMore than so many times make me a ladyIn common law, I wonder.""But I ask,What are you seeing out the window, lady?""What I'll be seeing more of in the yearsTo come as here I stand and go the roundOf many plates with towels many times.""And what is that? You only put me off.""Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-panMore than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;A little stretch of mowing-field for you;Not much of that until I come to woodsThat end all. And it's scarce enough to callA view.""And yet you think you like it, dear?""That's what you're so concerned to know! You hopeI like it. Bang goes something big awayOff there upstairs. The very tread of menAs great as those is shattering to the frameOf such a little house. Once left alone,You and I, dear, will go with softer stepsUp and down stairs and through the rooms, and noneBut sudden winds that snatch them from our handsWill ever slam the doors.""I think you seeMore than you like to own to out that window.""No; for besides the things I tell you of,I only see the years. They come and goIn alternation with the weeds, the field,The wood.""What kind of years?""Why, latter years—Different from early years.""I see them, too.You didn't count them?""No, the further offSo ran together that I didn't try to.It can scarce be that they would be in numberWe'd care to know, for we are not young now.And bang goes something else away off there.It sounds as if it were the men went down,And every crash meant one less to returnTo lighted city streets we, too, have known,But now are giving up for country darkness.""Come from that window where you see too much for me,And take a livelier view of things from here.They're going. Watch this husky swarming upOver the wheel into the sky-high seat,Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his noseAt the flame burning downward as he sucks it.""See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proofHow dark it's getting. Can you tell what timeIt is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.A wire she is of silver, as new as weTo everything. Her light won't last us long.It's something, though, to know we're going to have herNight after night and stronger every nightTo see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;Ask them to help you get it on its feet.We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!""They're not gone yet.""We've got to have the stove,Whatever else we want for. And a light.Have we a piece of candle if the lampAnd oil are buried out of reach?"AgainThe house was full of tramping, and the dark,Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,To which they set it true by eye; and thenCame up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,So much too light and airy for their strengthIt almost seemed to come ballooning up,Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling."A fit!" said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder."It's good luck when you move in to beginWith good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,It's not so bad in the country, settled down,When people 're getting on in life, You'll like it."Joe said: "You big boys ought to find a farm,And make good farmers, and leave other fellowsThe city work to do. There's not enoughFor everybody as it is in there.""God!" one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:"Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm."But Jimmy only made his jaw recedeFool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to sayHe saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boyWho said with seriousness that made them laugh,"Ma friend, you ain't know what it is you're ask."He doffed his cap and held it with both handsAcross his chest to make as 'twere a bow:"We're giving you our chances on de farm."And then they all turned to with deafening bootsAnd put each other bodily out of the house."Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think—I don't know what they think we see in whatThey leave us to: that pasture slope that seemsThe back some farm presents us; and your woodsTo northward from your window at the sink,Waiting to steal a step on us wheneverWe drop our eyes or turn to other things,As in the game ‘Ten-step' the children play.""Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.All they could say was ‘God!' when you proposedTheir coming out and making useful farmers.""Did they make something lonesome go through you?It would take more than them to sicken you—Us of our bargain. But they left us soAs to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.They almost shook me.""It's all so muchWhat we have always wanted, I confessIt's seeming bad for a moment makes it seemEven worse still, and so on down, down, down.It's nothing; it's their leaving us at dusk.I never bore it well when people went.The first night after guests have gone, the houseSeems haunted or exposed. I always takeA personal interest in the locking upAt bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off."He fetched a dingy lantern from behindA door. "There's that we didn't lose! And these!"—Some matches he unpocketed. "For food—The meals we've had no one can take from us.I wish that everything on earth were justAs certain as the meals we've had. I wishThe meals we haven't had were, anyway.What have you you know where to lay your hands on?""The bread we bought in passing at the store.There's butter somewhere, too.""Let's rend the bread.I'll light the fire for company for you;You'll not have any other companyTill Ed begins to get out on a SundayTo look us over and give us his ideaOf what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.He'll know what he would do if he were we,And all at once. He'll plan for us and planTo help us, but he'll take it out in planning.Well, you can set the table with the loaf.Let's see you find your loaf. I'll light the fire.I like chairs occupying other chairsNot offering a lady—""There again, Joe!You're tired.""I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out;Don't mind a word I say. It's a day's workTo empty one house of all household goodsAnd fill another with 'em fifteen miles away,Although you do no more than dump them down.""Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.""It's all so much what I have always wanted,I can't believe it's what you wanted, too.""Shouldn't you like to know?""I'd like to knowIf it is what you wanted, then how muchYou wanted it for me.""A troubled conscience!You don't want me to tell if I don't know.""I don't want to find out what can't be known.But who first said the word to come?""My dear,It's who first thought the thought. You're searching, Joe,For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings.Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.There are only middles.""What is this?""This life?Our sitting here by lantern-light togetherAmid the wreckage of a former home?You won't deny the lantern isn't new.The stove is not, and you are not to me,Nor I to you.""Perhaps you never were?""It would take me forever to reciteAll that's not new in where we find ourselves.New is a word for fools in towns who thinkStyle upon style in dress and thought at lastMust get somewhere. I've heard you say as much.No, this is no beginning.""Then an end?""End is a gloomy word.""Is it too lateTo drag you out for just a good-night callOn the old peach trees on the knoll to gropeBy starlight in the grass for a last peachThe neighbors may not have taken as their rightWhen the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking:I doubt if they have left us many grapes.Before we set ourselves to right the house,The first thing in the morning, out we goTo go the round of apple, cherry, peach,Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.All of a farm it is.""I know this much:I'm going to put you in your bed, if firstI have to make you build it. Come, the light."When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,The fire got out through crannies in the stoveAnd danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,As much at home as if they'd always danced there. |
Robert Frost |
33 | 2018-03-01 03:45:07 | Dust in the Eyes | 3/11/2016 | If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyesWill keep my talk from getting overwise,I'm not the one for putting off the proof.Let it be overwhelming, off a roofAnd round a corner, blizzard snow for dust,And blind me to a standstill if it must. | Robert Frost |
34 | 2018-03-01 03:45:13 | A Passing Glimpse | 3/10/2016 | To Ridgely TorrenceOn Last Looking into His 'Hesperides'I often see flowers from a passing carThat are gone before I can tell what they are.I want to get out of the train and go backTo see what they were beside the track.I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt- Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth- Not lupine living on sand and drouth.Was something brushed across my mindThat no one on earth will ever find?Heaven gives it glimpses only to thoseNot in position to look too close. |
Robert Frost |
35 | 2018-03-01 03:45:16 | The Most Of It | 12/17/2014 | He thought he kept the universe alone;For all the voice in answer he could wakeWas but the mocking echo of his ownFrom some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.Some morning from the boulder-broken beachHe would cry out on life, that what it wantsIs not its own love back in copy speech,But counter-love, original response.And nothing ever came of what he criedUnless it was the embodiment that crashedIn the cliff's talus on the other side,And then in the far distant water splashed,But after a time allowed for it to swim,Instead of proving human when it nearedAnd someone else additional to him,As a great buck it powerfully appeared,Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,And landed pouring like a waterfall,And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,And forced the underbrush—and that was all. |
Robert Frost |
36 | 2018-03-01 03:45:21 | A Hillside Thaw | 3/11/2016 | To think to know the country and now knowThe hillside on the day the sun lets goTen million silver lizards out of snow!As often as I've seen it done beforeI can't pretend to tell the way it's done.It looks as if some magic of the sunLifted the rug that bred them on the floorAnd the light breaking on them made them run.But if I though to stop the wet stampede,And caught one silver lizard by the tail,And put my foot on one without avail,And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneedIn front of twenty others' wriggling speed,- In the confusion of them all aglitter,And birds that joined in the excited funBy doubling and redoubling song and twitter,I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizardBy all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.From the high west she makes a gentle castAnd suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,She has her speel on every single lizard.I fancied when I looked at six o'clockThe swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.The moon was waiting for her chill effect.I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rockIn every lifelike posture of the swarm,Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.Across each other and side by side they lay.The spell that so could hold them as they wereWas wrought through trees without a breath of stormTo make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.One lizard at the end of every ray.The thought of my attempting such a stray! |
Robert Frost |
37 | 2018-03-01 03:45:26 | Place For A Third | 2/2/2015 | Nothing to say to all those marriages! She had made three herself to three of his. The score was even for them, three to three. But come to die she found she cared so much: She thought of children in a burial row; Three children in a burial row were sad. One man's three women in a burial row Somehow made her impatient with the man. And so she said to Laban, "You have done A good deal right; don't do the last thing wrong. Don't make me lie with those two other women." Laban said, No, he would not make her lie With anyone but that she had a mind to, If that was how she felt, of course, he said. She went her way. But Laban having caught This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza, And anxious to make all he could of it With something he remembered in himself, Tried to think how he could exceed his promise, And give good measure to the dead, though thankless. If that was how she felt, he kept repeating. His first thought under pressure was a grave In a new boughten grave plot by herself, Under he didn't care how great a stone: He'd sell a yoke of steers to pay for it. And weren't there special cemetery flowers, That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest; The flowers will go on with grief awhile, And no one seem neglecting or neglected? A prudent grief will not despise such aids. He thought of evergreen and everlasting. And then he had a thought worth many of these. Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy Who married her for playmate more than helpmate, And sometimes laughed at what it was between them. How would she like to sleep her last with him? Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name? He found the grave a town or two away, The headstone cut with John, Beloved Husband, Beside it room reserved; the say a sister's; A never-married sister's of that husband, Whether Eliza would be welcome there. The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister. So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing Of where Eliza wanted not to lie, And who had thought to lay her with her first love, Begged simply for the grave. The sister's face Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility. She wanted to do right. She'd have to think. Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care; And she was old and poor—but she cared, too. They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him, Then turned him out to go on other errands She said he might attend to in the village, While she made up her mind how much she cared— And how much Laban cared—and why he cared, (She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.) She'd looked Eliza up her second time, A widow at her second husband's grave, And offered her a home to rest awhile Before she went the poor man's widow's way, Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock. She and Eliza had been friends through all. Who was she to judge marriage in a world Whose Bible's so confused up in marriage counsel? The sister had not come across this Laban; A decent product of life's ironing-out; She must not keep him waiting. Time would press Between the death day and the funeral day. So when she saw him coming in the street She hurried her decision to be ready To meet him with his answer at the door. Laban had known about what it would be From the way she had set her poor old mouth, To do, as she had put it, what was right. She gave it through the screen door closed between them: "No, not with John. There wouldn't be no sense. Eliza's had too many other men." Laban was forced to fall back on his plan To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in: Which gives him for himself a choice of lots When his time comes to die and settle down. |
Robert Frost |
38 | 2018-03-01 03:45:31 | Paul's Wife | 2/3/2015 | To drive Paul out of any lumber campAll that was needed was to say to him,'How is the wife, Paul?'- and he'd disappear.Some said it was because be bad no wife,And hated to be twitted on the subject;Others because he'd come within a dayOr so of having one, and then been Jilted;Others because he'd had one once, a good one,Who'd run away with someone else and left him;And others still because he had one nowHe only had to be reminded of- He was all duty to her in a minute:He had to run right off to look her up,As if to say, 'That's so, how is my wife?I hope she isn't getting into mischief.'No one was anxious to get rid of Paul.He'd been the hero of the mountain campsEver since, just to show them, he bad slippedThe bark of a whole tamarack off wholeAs clean as boys do off a willow twigTo make a willow whistle on a SundayApril by subsiding meadow brooks.They seemed to ask him just to see him go,'How is the wife, Paul?' and he always went.He never stopped to murder anyoneWho asked the question. He just disappeared- Nobody knew in what direction,Although it wasn't usually longBefore they beard of him in some new camp,The same Paul at the same old feats of logging.The question everywhere was why should PaulObject to being asked a civil question- A man you could say almost anything toShort of a fighting word. You have the answers.And there was one more not so fair to Paul:That Paul had married a wife not his equal.Paul was ashamed of her. To match a heroShe would have had to be a heroine;Instead of which she was some half-breed squaw.But if the story Murphy told was true,She wasn't anything to be ashamed of.You know Paul could do wonders. Everyone'sHeard how he thrashed the horses on a loadThat wouldn't budge, until they simply stretchedTheir rawhide harness from the load to camp.Paul told the boss the load would be all right,'The sun will bring your load in'- and it did- By shrinking the rawhide to natural length.That's what is called a stretcher. But I guessThe one about his jumping so's to landWith both his feet at once against the ceiling,And then land safely right side up again,Back on the floor, is fact or pretty near fact.Well, this is such a yarn. Paul sawed his wifeOut of a white-pine log. Murphy was thereAnd, as you might say, saw the lady born.Paul worked at anything in lumbering.He'd been bard at it taking boards awayFor- I forget- the last ambitious sawyerTo want to find out if he couldn't pileThe lumber on Paul till Paul begged for mercy.They'd sliced the first slab off a big butt log,And the sawyer had slammed the carriage backTo slam end-on again against the saw teeth.To judge them by the way they caught themselvesWhen they saw what had happened to the log,They must have had a guilty expectationSomething was going to go with their slambanging.Something bad left a broad black streak of greaseOn the new wood the whole length of the logExcept, perhaps, a foot at either end.But when Paul put his finger in the grease,It wasn't grease at all, but a long slot.The log was hollow. They were sawing pine.'First time I ever saw a hollow pine.That comes of having Paul around the place.Take it to bell for me,' the sawyer said.Everyone had to have a look at itAnd tell Paul what he ought to do about it.(They treated it as his.) 'You take a jackknife,And spread the opening, and you've got a dugoutAll dug to go a-fishing in.' To PaulThe hollow looked too sound and clean and emptyEver to have housed birds or beasts or bees.There was no entrance for them to get in by.It looked to him like some new kind of hollowHe thought he'd better take his jackknife to.So after work that evening be came backAnd let enough light into it by cuttingTo see if it was empty. He made out in thereA slender length of pith, or was it pith?It might have been the skin a snake had castAnd left stood up on end inside the treeThe hundred years the tree must have been growing.More cutting and he bad this in both hands,And looking from it to the pond nearby,Paul wondered how it would respond to water.Not a breeze stirred, but just the breath of airHe made in walking slowly to the beachBlew it once off his hands and almost broke it.He laid it at the edge, where it could drink.At the first drink it rustled and grew limp.At the next drink it grew invisible.Paul dragged the shallows for it with his fingers,And thought it must have melted. It was gone.And then beyond the open water, dim with midges,Where the log drive lay pressed against the boom,It slowly rose a person, rose a girl,Her wet hair heavy on her like a helmet,Who, leaning on a log, looked back at Paul.And that made Paul in turn look backTo see if it was anyone behind himThat she was looking at instead of him.(Murphy had been there watching all the time,But from a shed where neither of them could see him.)There was a moment of suspense in birthWhen the girl seemed too waterlogged to live,Before she caught her first breath with a gaspAnd laughed. Then she climbed slowly to her feet,And walked off, talking to herself or Paul,Across the logs like backs of alligators,Paul taking after her around the pond.Next evening Murphy and some other fellowsGot drunk, and tracked the pair up Catamount,From the bare top of which there is a viewTO other hills across a kettle valley.And there, well after dark, let Murphy tell it,They saw Paul and his creature keeping house.It was the only glimpse that anyoneHas had of Paul and her since Murphy saw themFalling in love across the twilight millpond.More than a mile across the wildernessThey sat together halfway up a cliffIn a small niche let into it, the girlBrightly, as if a star played on the place,Paul darkly, like her shadow. All the lightWas from the girl herself, though, not from a star,As was apparent from what happened next.All those great ruffians put their throats together,And let out a loud yell, and threw a bottle,As a brute tribute of respect to beauty.Of course the bottle fell short by a mile,But the shout reached the girl and put her light out.She went out like a firefly, and that was all.So there were witnesses that Paul was marriedAnd not to anyone to be ashamed ofEveryone had been wrong in judging Paul.Murphy told me Paul put on all those airsAbout his wife to keep her to himself.Paul was what's called a terrible possessor.Owning a wife with him meant owning her.She wasn't anybody else's business,Either to praise her or much as name her,And he'd thank people not to think of her.Murphy's idea was that a man like PaulWouldn't be spoken to about a wifeIn any way the world knew how to speak. |
Robert Frost |
39 | 2018-03-01 03:45:37 | The Door In The Dark | 1/27/2015 | In going from room to room in the dark,I reached out blindly to save my face,But neglected, however lightly, to laceMy fingers and close my arms in an arc.A slim door got in past my guard,And hit me a blow in the head so hardI had my native simile jarred.So people and things don't pair any moreWith what they used to pair with before. | Robert Frost |
40 | 2018-03-01 03:45:41 | Maple | 6/24/2015 | Her teacher's certainty it must be MabelMade Maple first take notice of her name.She asked her father and he told her, 'Maple—Maple is right.''But teacher told the schoolThere's no such name.''Teachers don't know as muchAs fathers about children, you tell teacher.You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E.You ask her if she knows a maple tree.Well, you were named after a maple tree.Your mother named you. You and she just sawEach other in passing in the room upstairs,One coming this way into life, and oneGoing the other out of life—you know?So you can't have much recollection of her.She had been having a long look at you.She put her finger in your cheek so hardIt must have made your dimple there, and said,'Maple.' I said it too: 'Yes, for her name.'She nodded. So we're sure there's no mistake.I don't know what she wanted it to mean,But it seems like some word she left to bid youBe a good girl—be like a maple tree.How like a maple tree's for us to guess.Or for a little girl to guess sometime.Not now—at least I shouldn't try too hard now.By and by I will tell you all I knowAbout the different trees, and something, too,About your mother that perhaps may help.'Dangerous self-arousing words to sow.Luckily all she wanted of her name thenWas to rebuke her teacher with it next day,And give the teacher a scare as from her father.Anything further had been wasted on her,Or so he tried to think to avoid blame.She would forget it. She all but forgot it.What he sowed with her slept so long a sleep,And came so near death in the dark of years,That when it woke and came to life againThe flower was different from the parent seed.It carne back vaguely at the glass one day,As she stood saying her name over aloud,Striking it gently across her lowered eyesTo make it go well with the way she looked.What was it about her name? Its strangeness layIn having too much meaning. Other names,As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie,Signified nothing. Rose could have a meaning,But hadn't as it went. (She knew a Rose.)This difference from other names it wasMade people notice it—and notice her.(They either noticed it, or got it wrong.)Her problem was to find out what it askedIn dress or manner of the girl who bore it.If she could form some notion of her mother—What she bad thought was lovely, and what good.This was her mother's childhood home;The house one story high in front, three storiesOn the end it presented to the road.(The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.)Her mother's bedroom was her father's still,Where she could watch her mother's picture fading.Once she found for a bookmark in the BibleA maple leaf she thought must have been laidIn wait for her there. She read every wordOf the two pages it was pressed between,As if it was her mother speaking to her.But forgot to put the leaf back in closingAnd lost the place never to read again.She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it.So she looked for herself, as everyoneLooks for himself, more or less outwardly.And her self-seeking, fitful though it was,May still have been what led her on to read,And think a little, and get some city schooling.She learned shorthand, whatever shorthand mayHave had to do with it- she sometimes wondered.So, till she found herself in a strange placeFor the name Maple to have brought her to,Taking dictation on a paper padAnd, in the pauses when she raised her eyes,Watching out of a nineteenth story windowAn airship laboring with unshiplike motionAnd a vague all-disturbing roar above the riverBeyond the highest city built with hands.Someone was saying in such natural tonesShe almost wrote the words down on her knee,'Do you know you remind me of a tree- A maple tree?''Because my name is Maple?''Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel.''No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.I have to let them call me what they like.'They were both stirred that he should have divinedWithout the name her personal mystery.It made it seem as if there must be somethingShe must have missed herself. So they were married,And took the fancy home with them to live by.They went on pilgrimage once to her father's(The house one story high in front, three storiesOn the side it presented to the road)To see if there was not some special treeShe might have overlooked. They could find none,Not so much as a single tree for shade,Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard.She told him of the bookmark maple leafIn the big Bible, and all she rememberedof the place marked with it—'Wave offering,Something about wave offering, it said.''You've never asked your father outright, have you?''I have, and been Put off sometime, I think.'(This was her faded memory of the wayOnce long ago her father had put himself off.)'Because no telling but it may have beenSomething between your father and your motherNot meant for us at all.''Not meant for me?Where would the fairness be in giving meA name to carry for life and never knowThe secret of?''And then it may have beenSomething a father couldn't tell a daughterAs well as could a mother. And againIt may have been their one lapse into fancy'Twould be too bad to make him sorry forBy bringing it up to him when be was too old.Your father feels us round him with our questing,And holds us off unnecessarily,As if he didn't know what little thingMight lead us on to a discovery.It was as personal as be could beAbout the way he saw it was with youTo say your mother, bad she lived, would beAs far again as from being born to bearing.''Just one look more with what you say in mind,And I give up'; which last look came to nothing.But though they now gave up the search forever,They clung to what one had seen in the otherBy inspiration. It proved there was something.They kept their thoughts away from when the maplesStood uniform in buckets, and the steamOf sap and snow rolled off the sugarhouse.When they made her related to the maples,It was the tree the autumn fire ran throughAnd swept of leathern leaves, but left the barkUnscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke.They always took their holidays in autumn.Once they came on a maple in a glade,Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up,And every leaf of foliage she'd wornLaid scarlet and pale pink about her feet.But its age kept them from considering this one.Twenty-five years ago at Maple's namingIt hardly could have been a two-leaved seedlingThe next cow might have licked up out at pasture.Could it have been another maple like it?They hovered for a moment near discovery,Figurative enough to see the symbol,But lacking faith in anything to meanThe same at different times to different people.Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept themFrom thinking it could be a thing so bridal.And anyway it came too late for Maple.She used her hands to cover up her eyes.'We would not see the secret if we could now:We are not looking for it any more.'Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.No matter that the meaning was not clear.A name with meaning could bring up a child,Taking the child out of the parents' hands.Better a meaningless name, I should say,As leaving more to nature and happy chance.Name children some names and see what you do. |
Robert Frost |
41 | 2018-03-01 03:45:43 | The Rock Cries Out to Us Today | 2/8/2016 | A Rock, A River, A TreeHosts to species long since departed,Mark the mastodon.The dinosaur, who left dry tokensOf their sojourn hereOn our planet floor,Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doomIs lost in the gloom of dust and ages.But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,Come, you may stand upon myBack and face your distant destiny,But seek no haven in my shadow.I will give you no hiding place down here.You, created only a little lower thanThe angels, have crouched too long inThe bruising darkness,Have lain too longFace down in ignorance.Your mouths spelling wordsArmed for slaughter.The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,But do not hide your face.Across the wall of the world,A river sings a beautiful song,Come rest here by my side.Each of you a bordered country,Delicate and strangely made proud,Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.Your armed struggles for profitHave left collars of waste uponMy shore, currents of debris upon my breast.Yet, today I call you to my riverside,If you will study war no more.Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songsThe Creator gave to me when IAnd the tree and stone were one.Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your browAnd when you yet knew you still knew nothing.The river sings and sings on.There is a true yearning to respond toThe singing river and the wise rock.So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,The African and Native American, the Sioux,The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.They hear. They all hearThe speaking of the tree.Today, the first and last of every treeSpeaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.Each of you, descendant of some passed onTraveller, has been paid for.You, who gave me my first name,You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,Then forced on bloody feet,Left me to the employment of other seekers- Desperate for gain, starving for gold.You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmarePraying for a dream.Here, root yourselves beside me.I am the tree planted by the river,Which will not be moved.I, the rock, I the river, I the treeI am yours- your passages have been paid.Lift up your faces, you have a piercing needFor this bright morning dawning for you.History, despite its wrenching pain,Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,Need not be lived again.Lift up your eyes uponThe day breaking for you.Give birth againTo the dream.Women, children, men,Take it into the palms of your hands.Mold it into the shape of your mostPrivate need. Sculpt it intoThe image of your most public self.Lift up your hearts.Each new hour holds new chancesFor new beginnings.Do not be wedded foreverTo fear, yoked eternallyTo brutishness.The horizon leans forward,Offering you space to place new steps of change.Here, on the pulse of this fine dayYou may have the courageTo look up and out upon me,The rock, the river, the tree, your country.No less to Midas than the mendicant.No less to you now than the mastodon then.Here on the pulse of this new dayYou may have the grace to look up and outAnd into your sister's eyes,Into your brother's face, your countryAnd say simplyVery simplyWith hopeGood morning. |
Maya Angelou |
42 | 2018-03-01 03:45:50 | Song for the Old Ones | 3/9/2016 | My Fathers sit on benches their flesh counts every plank the slats leave dents of darknessdeep in their withered flanks.They nod like broken candles all waxed and burnt profound they say 'It's understandingthat makes the world go round.'There in those pleated faces I see the auction block the chains and slavery's cofflesthe whip and lash and stock.My Fathers speak in voices that shred my fact and sound they say 'It's our submissionthat makes the world go round.'They used the finest cunning their naked wits and wiles the lowly Uncle Tommingand Aunt Jemima's smiles.They've laughed to shield their crying then shuffled through their dreams and stepped 'n' fetched a countryto write the blues with screams.I understand their meaning it could and did derive from living on the edge of deathThey kept my race alive. |
Maya Angelou |
43 | 2018-03-01 03:45:53 | In All Ways A Woman | 3/9/2016 | In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature. The phrase 'A woman always has the right to change her mind' played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than 'be like a woman and change my mind.'Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough. She must have convinced herself, or be in the unending process of convincing herself, that she, her values, and her choices are important. In a time a nd world where males hold sway and control, the pressure upon women to yield their rights-of-way is tremendous. And it is under those very circumstances that the woman's toughness must be in evidence.She must resist considering herself a lesser version of her male counterpart. She is not a sculptress, poetess, authoress, Jewess, Negress, or even (now rare) in university parlance a rectoress. If she is the thing, then for her own sense of self and for the education of the ill-informed she must insist with rectitude in being the thing and in being called the thing.A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer. She will need to prize her tenderness and be able to display it at appropriate times in order to prevent toughness from gaining total authority and to avoid becoming a mirror image of those men who value power above life, and control over love.It is imperative that a woman keep her sense of humor intact and at the ready. She must see, even if only in secret, that she is the funniest, looniest woman in her world, which she should also see as being the most absurd world of all times. It has been said that laughter is therapeutic and amiability lengthens the life span. Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives. The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory. |
Maya Angelou |
44 | 2018-03-01 03:46:00 | Glory Falls | 3/9/2016 | Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross and hatred is the ballast of the rock which his upon our necks and underfoot. We have woven robes of silk and clothed our nakedness with tapestry. From crawling on this murky planet's floor we soar beyond the birds and through the clouds and edge our waays from hate and blind despair and bring horror to our brothers, and to our sisters cheer. We grow despite the horror that we feed upon our own tomorrow. We grow. |
Maya Angelou |
45 | 2018-03-01 03:46:06 | The Week of Diana | 3/9/2016 | The dark lantern of world sadness has cast its shadow upon the land.We stumble into our misery on leaden feet.Our minds seek to comprehend the unknowable and our hearts seek toMeasure a tomorrow without the Sunshine Princess.Her hands which had held bright tiaras and jewelled crowns,Also stroked the faces of pain alongAngola's dusty roads.She was born to the privilege of plentyYet, she communed with the needy without a show of pompous piety.Glowing in Bosnia, radiant at glittering balls,We came to love her and claim her for her grace and accessibility.Luminous always.We smiled to see her enter and grinned at her happiness.Now the world we made is forever changed…Made smaller, meaner, less colorful.Yet, because she did live,Because she ventured life and confronted change,She has left us a legacy.We also may dare…To care for some other than ourselves and those who look like us.And maybe we can take a lesson from herAnd try to live our livesWith passion, compassion, humor and grace.Goodbye Sunshine Princess. |
Maya Angelou |
46 | 2018-03-01 03:46:09 | Harlem Hopscotch | 3/9/2016 | One foot down, then hop! It's hot. Good things for the ones that's got.Another jump, now to the left. Everybody for hisself.In the air, now both feet down. Since you black, don't stick around.Food is gone, the rent is due, Curse and cry and then jump two.All the people out of work, Hold for three, then twist and jerk.Cross the line, they count you out. That's what hopping's all about.Both feet flat, the game is done.They think I lost. I think I won. |
Maya Angelou |
47 | 2018-03-01 03:46:16 | The Traveller | 3/9/2016 | Byways and bygoneAnd lone nights longSun rays and sea wavesAnd star and stoneManless and friendlessNo cave my homeThis is my tortureMy long nights, lone | Maya Angelou |
48 | 2018-03-01 03:46:19 | The Black Family Pledge | 3/9/2016 | BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,our children no longer give us honor.BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors clearedkneeling in perilous undergrowth,our children cannot find their way.BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors,our children cannot pray.BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,our children cannot hear us crying.BECAUSE we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering,our befuddled children give birth to childrenthey neither want nor understand.BECAUSE we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within ourgates, an holds us up to the mirror of the world shouting,'Regard the loveless'Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace ourlowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate,to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things,knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters.We ARE our brothers and sisters.IN HONOR of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues,and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless desolation, we make this pledge. |
Maya Angelou |
49 | 2018-03-01 03:46:22 | Our Grandmothers | 7/14/2015 | She lay, skin down in the moist dirt, the canebrake rustling with the whispers of leaves, and loud longing of hounds and the ransack of hunters crackling the near branches.She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward freedom, I shall not, I shall not be moved.She gathered her babies, their tears slick as oil on black faces, their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness. Momma, is Master going to sell you from us tomorrow?Yes. Unless you keep walking more and talking less. Yes. Unless the keeper of our lives releases me from all commandments. Yes. And your lives, never mine to live, will be executed upon the killing floor of innocents. Unless you match my heart and words, saying with me,I shall not be moved.In Virginia tobacco fields, leaning into the curve of Steinway pianos, along Arkansas roads, in the red hills of Georgia, into the palms of her chained hands, she cried against calamity, You have tried to destroy me and though I perish daily,I shall not be moved.Her universe, often summarized into one black body falling finally from the tree to her feet, made her cry each time into a new voice. All my past hastens to defeat, and strangers claim the glory of my love, Iniquity has bound me to his bed.yet, I must not be moved.She heard the names, swirling ribbons in the wind of history: nigger, nigger bitch, heifer, mammy, property, creature, ape, baboon, whore, hot tail, thing, it. She said, But my description cannot fit your tongue, for I have a certain way of being in this world,and I shall not, I shall not be moved.No angel stretched protecting wings above the heads of her children, fluttering and urging the winds of reason into the confusions of their lives. The sprouted like young weeds, but she could not shield their growth from the grinding blades of ignorance, nor shape them into symbolic topiaries. She sent them away, underground, overland, in coaches and shoeless.When you learn, teach. When you get, give. As for me,I shall not be moved.She stood in midocean, seeking dry land. She searched God's face. Assured, she placed her fire of service on the altar, and though clothed in the finery of faith, when she appeared at the temple door, no sign welcomed Black Grandmother, Enter here.Into the crashing sound, into wickedness, she cried, No one, no, nor no one million ones dare deny me God, I go forth along, and stand as ten thousand.The Divine upon my right impels me to pull forever at the latch on Freedom's gate.The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my feet without ceasing into the camp of the righteous and into the tents of the free.These momma faces, lemon-yellow, plum-purple, honey-brown, have grimaced and twisted down a pyramid for years. She is Sheba the Sojourner, Harriet and Zora, Mary Bethune and Angela, Annie to Zenobia.She stands before the abortion clinic, confounded by the lack of choices. In the Welfare line, reduced to the pity of handouts. Ordained in the pulpit, shielded by the mysteries. In the operating room, husbanding life. In the choir loft, holding God in her throat. On lonely street corners, hawking her body. In the classroom, loving the children to understanding.Centered on the world's stage, she sings to her loves and beloveds, to her foes and detractors: However I am perceived and deceived, however my ignorance and conceits, lay aside your fears that I will be undone,for I shall not be moved. |
Maya Angelou |
50 | 2018-03-01 03:46:26 | Ain't That Bad? | 3/9/2016 | Dancin' the funky chickenEatin' ribs and tipsDiggin' all the latest soundsAnd drinkin' gin in sips.Puttin' down that do-ragTighten' up my 'froWrappin' up in BlacknessDon't I shine and glow?Hearin' Stevie WonderCookin' beans and riceGoin' to the operaCheckin' out Leontyne Price.Get down, Jesse JacksonDance on, Alvin AileyTalk, Miss Barbara JordanGroove, Miss Pearlie Bailey.Now ain't they bad?An ain't they Black?An ain't they Black?An' ain't they Bad?An ain't they bad?An' ain't they Black?An' ain't they fine?Black like the hour of the nightWhen your love turns and wriggles close to your sideBlack as the earth which has given birthTo nations, and when all else is gone will abide.Bad as the storm that leaps raging from the heavensBringing the welcome rainBad as the sun burning orange hot at middayLifting the waters again.Arthur Ashe on the tennis courtMohammed Ali in the ringAndre Watts and Andrew YoungBlack men doing their thing.Dressing in purples and pinks and greensExotic as rum and CokesLiving our lives with flash and styleAin't we colorful folks?Now ain't we bad?An' ain't we Black?An' ain't we Black?An' ain't we bad?An' ain't we bad?An' ain't we Black?An' ain't we fine? |
Maya Angelou |
51 | 2018-03-01 03:46:29 | When I Think About Myself | 9/15/2015 | When I think about myself, I almost laugh myself to death, My life has been one great big joke, A dance that's walked A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke When I think about myself.Sixty years in these folks' world The child I works for calls me girl I say 'Yes ma'am' for working's sake. Too proud to bend Too poor to break, I laugh until my stomach ache, When I think about myself.My folks can make me split my side, I laughed so hard I nearly died, The tales they tell, sound just like lying, They grow the fruit, But eat the rind, I laugh until I start to crying, When I think about my folks. |
Maya Angelou |
52 | 2018-03-01 03:46:35 | Son to Mother | 3/9/2016 | I start nowars, raining poisonon cathedrals,melting Stars of Davidinto golden faucetsto be lighted by lampsshaded by human skin.I set nostore on the strange lands,send nomissionaries beyond myborders,to plunder secretsand barter souls.Theysay you took my manhood,Momma.Come sit on my lapand tell me,what do you want me to sayto them, justbefore I annihilatetheir ignorance ? | Maya Angelou |
53 | 2018-03-01 03:46:38 | The Health-Food Diner | 12/16/2014 | The Health-Food DinerNo sprouted wheat and soya shootsAnd Brussels in a cake,Carrot straw and spinach raw,(Today, I need a steak).Not thick brown rice and rice pilawOr mushrooms creamed on toast,Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,(I'm dreaming of a roast).Health-food folks around the worldAre thinned by anxious zeal,They look for help in seafood kelp(I count on breaded veal).No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,Zucchini by the ton,Uncooked kale and bodies frailAre sure to make me runtoLoins of pork and chicken thighsAnd standing rib, so prime,Pork chops brown and fresh ground round(I crave them all the time).Irish stews and boiled corned beefand hot dogs by the scores,or any place that saves a spaceFor smoking carnivores. |
Maya Angelou |
54 | 2018-03-01 03:46:43 | On Aging | 5/14/2015 | When you see me sitting quietly,Like a sack left on the shelf,Don’t think I need your chattering.I’m listening to myself.Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me! Hold! Stop your sympathy! Understanding if you got it,Otherwise I’ll do without it! When my bones are stiff and aching,And my feet won’t climb the stair,I will only ask one favor:Don’t bring me no rocking chair.When you see me walking, stumbling,Don’t study and get it wrong.‘Cause tired don’t mean lazyAnd every goodbye ain’t gone.I’m the same person I was back then,A little less hair, a little less chin,A lot less lungs and much less wind.But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in. |
Maya Angelou |
55 | 2018-03-01 03:46:49 | These Yet To Be United States | 1/17/2015 | Tremors of your network cause kings to disappear. Your open mouth in anger makes nations bow in fear.Your bombs can change the seasons, obliterate the spring. What more do you long for ? Why are you suffering ?You control the human lives in Rome and Timbuktu. Lonely nomads wandering owe Telstar to you.Seas shift at your bidding, your mushrooms fill the sky. Why are you unhappy ? Why do your children cry ?They kneel alone in terror with dread in every glance. Their nights ['rights' ? - Schrift nicht lesbar] are threatened daily by a grim inheritance.You dwell in whitened castles with deep and poisoned moats and cannot hear the curses which fill your children's throats. |
Maya Angelou |
56 | 2018-03-01 03:46:54 | Preacher, Don't Send Me | 3/9/2016 | Preacher, don't send mewhen I dieto some big ghettoin the skywhere rats eat catsof the leopard typeand Sunday brunchis grits and tripe.I've known those ratsI've seen them killand grits I've hadwould make a hill,or maybe a mountain,so what I needfrom you on Sundayis a different creed.Preacher, please don'tpromise mestreets of goldand milk for free.I stopped all milkat four years oldand once I'm deadI won't need gold.I'd call a placepure paradisewhere families are loyaland strangers are nice,where the music is jazzand the season is fall.Promise me thator nothing at all. |
Maya Angelou |
57 | 2018-03-01 03:46:59 | Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down | 3/9/2016 | There's a long-legged girlin San Franciscoby the Golden Gate.She said she'd give me all I wantedbut I just couldn't wait.I started toPickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,gettin to the next townBaby.There's a pretty brownin Birmingham.Boys, she little and cutebut when she like to tied me downI had to grab my suit and started toPickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,getting to the next townBaby.I met that lovely Detroit ladyand thought my time had comeBut just before I said "I do"I said "I got to run" and started toPickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,getting to the next townBaby.There ain't no words for what I feelabout a pretty faceBut if I stay I just might missa prettier one some placeI started toPickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,Pickin em up and layin em down,getting to the next townBaby. |
Maya Angelou |
58 | 2018-03-01 03:47:05 | Recovery | 3/9/2016 | A Last love,proper in conclusion,should snip the wingsforbidding further flight.But I, now,reft of that confusion,am lifted upand speeding toward the light. | Maya Angelou |
59 | 2018-03-01 03:47:08 | I know why the caged bird sings | 3/9/2016 | A free bird leaps on the backOf the wind and floats downstream Till the current ends and dips his wing In the orange suns raysAnd dares to claim the sky.But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cageCan seldom see through his bars of rageHis wings are clipped and his feet are tiedSo he opens his throat to sing.The caged bird sings with a fearful trillOf things unknown but longed for stillAnd his tune is heard on the distant hill forThe caged bird sings of freedom.The free bird thinks of another breezeAnd the trade winds soft throughThe sighing treesAnd the fat worms waiting on a dawn-brightLawn and he names the sky his own.But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreamsHis shadow shouts on a nightmare screamHis wings are clipped and his feet are tiedSo he opens his throat to sing.The caged bird sings withA fearful trill of things unknownBut longed for still and hisTune is heard on the distant hillFor the caged bird sings of freedom. |
Maya Angelou |
60 | 2018-03-01 03:47:12 | When Great Trees Fall | 2/15/2016 | Maya Angelou | |
61 | 2018-03-01 03:47:16 | Old Folks Laugh | 2/10/2015 | They have spent theircontent of simpering,holding their lips thisand that way, windingthe lines betweentheir brows. Old folksallow their bellies to jiggle like slowtambourines.The hollersrise up and spillover any way they want.When old folks laugh, they free the world.They turn slowly, slyly knowingthe best and the worstof remembering.Saliva glistens inthe corners of their mouths,their heads wobbleon brittle necks, buttheir lapsare filled with memories.When old folks laugh, they consider the promiseof dear painless death, and generouslyforgive life for happeningto them. |
Maya Angelou |
62 | 2018-03-01 03:47:17 | Televised | 3/9/2016 | Maya Angelou | |
63 | 2018-03-01 03:47:23 | Life Doesn't Frighten Me | 8/6/2015 | Shadows on the wallNoises down the hallLife doesn't frighten me at all Bad dogs barking loudBig ghosts in a cloudLife doesn't frighten me at all Mean old Mother GooseLions on the looseThey don't frighten me at all Dragons breathing flameOn my counterpaneThat doesn't frighten me at all. I go booMake them shooI make funWay they runI won't crySo they flyI just smileThey go wild Life doesn't frighten me at all. Tough guys fightAll alone at nightLife doesn't frighten me at all. Panthers in the parkStrangers in the darkNo, they don't frighten me at all. That new classroom whereBoys all pull my hair(Kissy little girlsWith their hair in curls)They don't frighten me at all. Don't show me frogs and snakesAnd listen for my scream,If I'm afraid at allIt's only in my dreams. I've got a magic charmThat I keep up my sleeveI can walk the ocean floorAnd never have to breathe. Life doesn't frighten me at allNot at allNot at all. Life doesn't frighten me at all. |
Maya Angelou |
64 | 2018-03-01 03:47:26 | Savior | 3/9/2016 | Maya Angelou | |
65 | 2018-03-01 03:47:30 | California Prodigal | 1/23/2012 | Maya Angelou | |
66 | 2018-03-01 03:47:32 | The Mothering Blackness | 1/23/2012 | Maya Angelou | |
67 | 2018-03-01 03:47:34 | We Had Him | 1/13/2014 | Maya Angelou | |
68 | 2018-03-01 03:47:38 | Human Family | 12/4/2014 | I note the obvious differencesin the human family.Some of us are serious,some thrive on comedy.Some declare their lives are livedas true profundity,and others claim they really livethe real reality.The variety of our skin tonescan confuse, bemuse, delight,brown and pink and beige and purple,tan and blue and white.I've sailed upon the seven seasand stopped in every land,I've seen the wonders of the worldnot yet one common man.I know ten thousand womencalled Jane and Mary Jane,but I've not seen any twowho really were the same.Mirror twins are differentalthough their features jibe,and lovers think quite different thoughtswhile lying side by side.We love and lose in China,we weep on England's moors,and laugh and moan in Guinea,and thrive on Spanish shores.We seek success in Finland,are born and die in Maine.In minor ways we differ,in major we're the same.I note the obvious differencesbetween each sort and type,but we are more alike, my friends,than we are unalike.We are more alike, my friends,than we are unalike.We are more alike, my friends,than we are unalike. |
Maya Angelou |
69 | 2018-03-01 03:47:43 | Kin | 1/23/2012 | Maya Angelou | |
70 | 2018-03-01 03:47:49 | A Plagued Journey | 1/23/2012 | Maya Angelou | |
71 | 2018-03-01 03:47:52 | Equality | 1/3/2015 | Maya Angelou | |
72 | 2018-03-01 03:47:59 | Awaking In New York | 1/23/2012 | Maya Angelou | |
73 | 2018-03-01 03:48:04 | A Brave And Startling Truth | 1/23/2012 | We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and startling truth And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility And allow the pure air to cool our palms When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged can walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of abuse When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Nor the Gardens of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled into delicious color By Western sunsets Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the Rising Sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cankerous words Which challenge our very existence Yet out of those same mouths Come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it. |
Maya Angelou |
74 | 2018-03-01 03:48:06 | On The Pulse Of Morning | 1/3/2003 | A Rock, A River, A TreeHosts to species long since departed,Mark the mastodon.The dinosaur, who left dry tokensOf their sojourn hereOn our planet floor,Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doomIs lost in the gloom of dust and ages.But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,Come, you may stand upon myBack and face your distant destiny,But seek no haven in my shadow.I will give you no hiding place down here.You, created only a little lower thanThe angels, have crouched too long inThe bruising darkness,Have lain too longFace down in ignorance.Your mouths spelling wordsArmed for slaughter.The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,But do not hide your face.Across the wall of the world,A river sings a beautiful song,Come rest here by my side.Each of you a bordered country,Delicate and strangely made proud,Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.Your armed struggles for profitHave left collars of waste uponMy shore, currents of debris upon my breast.Yet, today I call you to my riverside,If you will study war no more.Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songsThe Creator gave to me when IAnd the tree and stone were one.Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your browAnd when you yet knew you still knew nothing.The river sings and sings on.There is a true yearning to respond toThe singing river and the wise rock.So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,The African and Native American, the Sioux,The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.They hear. They all hearThe speaking of the tree.Today, the first and last of every treeSpeaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.Each of you, descendant of some passed onTraveller, has been paid for.You, who gave me my first name,You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,Then forced on bloody feet,Left me to the employment of other seekers- Desperate for gain, starving for gold.You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmarePraying for a dream.Here, root yourselves beside me.I am the tree planted by the river,Which will not be moved.I, the rock, I the river, I the treeI am yours- your passages have been paid.Lift up your faces, you have a piercing needFor this bright morning dawning for you.History, despite its wrenching pain,Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,Need not be lived again.Lift up your eyes uponThe day breaking for you.Give birth againTo the dream.Women, children, men,Take it into the palms of your hands.Mold it into the shape of your mostPrivate need. Sculpt it intoThe image of your most public self.Lift up your hearts.Each new hour holds new chancesFor new beginnings.Do not be wedded foreverTo fear, yoked eternallyTo brutishness.The horizon leans forward,Offering you space to place new steps of change.Here, on the pulse of this fine dayYou may have the courageTo look up and out upon me,The rock, the river, the tree, your country.No less to Midas than the mendicant.No less to you now than the mastodon then.Here on the pulse of this new dayYou may have the grace to look up and outAnd into your sister's eyes,Into your brother's face, your countryAnd say simplyVery simplyWith hopeGood morning. |
Maya Angelou |
75 | 2018-03-01 03:48:12 | Momma Welfare Roll | 1/3/2003 | Maya Angelou | |
76 | 2018-03-01 03:48:18 | Weekend Glory | 1/3/2003 | Maya Angelou | |
77 | 2018-03-01 03:48:22 | When You Come | 1/3/2003 | Maya Angelou | |
78 | 2018-03-01 03:48:28 | The Detached | 6/18/2005 | Maya Angelou | |
79 | 2018-03-01 03:48:34 | Insomniac | 1/3/2003 | Maya Angelou | |
80 | 2018-03-01 03:48:39 | Remembrance | 1/3/2003 | Maya Angelou | |
81 | 2018-03-01 03:48:44 | The Procreation Sonnets (1 - 17) | 3/29/2010 | William Shakespeare | |
82 | 2018-03-01 03:48:51 | Sonnet Xlv | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
83 | 2018-03-01 03:48:56 | Sonnet Xxiv | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
84 | 2018-03-01 03:49:01 | Sonnet Lxxxvi | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
85 | 2018-03-01 03:49:06 | Sonnet Lxxvi | 12/31/2002 | William Shakespeare | |
86 | 2018-03-01 03:49:08 | Sonnet Xci | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
87 | 2018-03-01 03:49:12 | The Rival Poet Sonnets (78 - 86) | 3/29/2010 | William Shakespeare | |
88 | 2018-03-01 03:49:17 | Sonnet Xlix | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
89 | 2018-03-01 03:49:19 | Sonnet Lvi | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
90 | 2018-03-01 03:49:23 | Sonnets Xiv | 1/4/2003 | William Shakespeare | |
91 | 2018-03-01 03:49:28 | Speech: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" | 10/22/2015 | Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones;So let it be with Caesar. The noble BrutusHath told you Caesar was ambitious:If it were so, it was a grievous fault,And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-For Brutus is an honourable man;So are they all, all honourable men-Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.He was my friend, faithful and just to me:But Brutus says he was ambitious;And Brutus is an honourable man.He hath brought many captives home to RomeWhose ransoms did the general coffers fill:Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;And Brutus is an honourable man.You all did see that on the LupercalI thrice presented him a kingly crown,Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;And, sure, he is an honourable man.I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,But here I am to speak what I do know.You all did love him once, not without cause:What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,And I must pause till it come back to me. |
William Shakespeare |
92 | 2018-03-01 03:49:32 | Sonnets Xxv: Let Those Who Are In Favour With Their Stars | 1/1/2004 | William Shakespeare | |
93 | 2018-03-01 03:49:35 | Sonnet Lvii | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
94 | 2018-03-01 03:49:41 | Sonnet Lviii | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
95 | 2018-03-01 03:49:45 | Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I | 8/9/2016 | Three witches, casting a spell ...Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights hast thirty one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. |
William Shakespeare |
96 | 2018-03-01 03:49:50 | Sonnet Xxxiii | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
97 | 2018-03-01 03:49:53 | Sonnet Xli | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
98 | 2018-03-01 03:49:56 | Sonnet Xl | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
99 | 2018-03-01 03:50:00 | Sonnet Xxxix | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
100 | 2018-03-01 03:50:04 | Sonnet Xii | 5/21/2001 | William Shakespeare | |
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