A Boy's Will(1913) - Robert Frost

The Pasture 

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may);

I shan't be gone long.―You come too. 

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother. It's so young

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I shan't be gone long.―You come too.  

-----------

목 장

목장의 샘을 치우러 갈 것이오.

그저 낙엽이나 긁어 치울 생각이오.

(그리고 맑아지는 물이나 지켜볼까 하오.)

오래 걸리지 않을 것이오. 당신도 갑시다. 

어린 송아지를 데리러 갈 것이오.

어미 소 옆에 서 있지요.

너무 어려서어미가 혀로 핥으면 비틀비틀 하오.

오래 걸리지 않을 것이오. 당신도 갑시다.

-신재실 옮김-
   
단상(斷想): 단순하고도 강렬한 표현에 사랑의 동행을 구하는 화자의 진솔한 혼이 배어있다. 남편과 아내, 시인과 독자, 스승과 제자, 또는 친구와 친구가 함께 길을 나서는 것은 사랑과 창조의 시작이고 끝이다. 겨우내 방치되었던 목장의 샘물을 이른 봄에 말끔히 치우는 일, 풀밭에 매 놓은 송아지를 데려오는 일은 농부의 일상이다. 이른 봄 샘물을 말끔히 치우는 일은 한 해 농사의 상징적 시작이며, 매 놓은 어린 송아지를 다시 집으로 데려오는 일은 하루 농사의 상징적 마무리다. 하찮아 보이지만, 사랑하는 이와 동행하면 즐겁고 행복한 일들이다. 사랑이 별 것인가? 이런 게 사랑이지! 동행하는 것, 그것이 바로 사랑이다.

-신재실 씀-

----------

https://youtu.be/AjA1oY1uHwE?list=PLpBINv9B8dRKQfeQ6aPNc1EH4dAIIwGah 

https://youtu.be/viRGycffbjA?list=OLAK5uy_mK1UfXdAKYfw1MrCVWm5s3dbVEIv46oCw 

youtu.be/nc3ZDzMc8bI

youtu.be/2qwCEnkb2_E

youtu.be/JZ4MWH8HcXg

-----------

A Boy's Will(1913)

Into My Own

Ghost House

My November Guest

 Love and a Question

A Late Walk

Stars

Storm Fear

Wind and Window Flower

To the Thawing Wind

A Prayer in Spring

Flower Gathering

Rose Pogonias

Waiting

In a Vale

A Dream Pang

In Neglect

The Vantage Point

Mowing

Going for Water

Revelation

The Trial by Existence

In Equal Sacrifice

The Tuft of Flowers

Pan with Us

The Demiurge's Laugh

Now Close the Windows

In Hardwood Groves

A Line-Storm Song

October

My Butterfly

Reluctance

youtu.be/kMKbVxlmw_M

INTO MY OWN

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ‘twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some dayInto their vastness I should steal away,Fearless of ever finding open land,Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

 I do not see why I should e’er turn back,Or those should not set forth upon my trackTo overtake me, who should miss me hereAnd long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

GHOST HOUSE

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star,
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

LOVE AND A QUESTION

A stranger came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
And, for all burden, care.
He asked with the eyes more than the lips
For a shelter for the night,
And he turned and looked at the road afar
Without a window light.

The bridegroom came forth into the porch
With “Let us look at the sky,
And question what of the night to be,
Stranger, you and I.”
The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
The woodbine berries were blue,
Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
“Stranger, I wish I knew.”

Within, the bride in the dusk alone
Bent over the open fire,
Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
And the thought of the heart’s desire.
The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
Yet saw but her within,
And wished her heart in a case of gold
And pinned with a silver pin.

The bridegroom thought it little to give
A dole of bread, a purse,
A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
Or for the rich a curse;

But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.

A LATE WALK

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

And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.

STARS

How countlessly they congregate
O’er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!—

As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,—

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

STORM FEAR

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
“Come out! Come out!”—
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether ’tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.

WIND AND WINDOW FLOWER

Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking—glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.

TO THE THAWING WIND

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate‘er you do to-night,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ices go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.

A PRAYER IN SPRING

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

FLOWER-GATHERING

I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?

All for me? And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I’ve been long away.

ROSE POGONIAS

A saturated meadow,
Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
A circle scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall;
Where winds were quite excluded,
And the air was stifling sweet
With the breath of many flowers,—
A temple of the heat.

There we bowed us in the burning,
As the sun’s right worship is,
To pick where none could miss them
A thousand orchises;
For though the grass was scattered,
Yet every second spear
Seemed tipped with wings of color,
That tinged the atmosphere.

We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the spot,
That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot;
Or if not all so favoured,
Obtain such grace of hours,
That none should mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.

ASKING FOR ROSES

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
“I wonder,” I say, “who the owner of those is.”
“Oh, no one you know,” she answers me airy,
“But one we must ask if we want any roses.”

So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

“Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?”
‘Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
“Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
’Tis summer again; there’s two come for roses.

“A word with you, that of the singer recalling—
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.”

We do not loosen our hands’ intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

WAITING

Afield at Dusk

What things for dream there are when spectre-like,
Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubble field,
From which the laborers’ voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song4
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memory of one absent most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

IN A VALE

When I was young, we dwelt in a vale
By a misty fen that rang all night,
And thus it was the maidens pale
I knew so well, whose garments trail
Across the reeds to a window light.

The fen had every kind of bloom,
And for every kind there was a face,
And a voice that has sounded in my room
Across the sill from the outer gloom.
Each came singly unto her place,

But all came every night with the mist;
And often they brought so much to say
Of things of moment to which, they wist,
One so lonely was fain to list,
That the stars were almost faded away

Before the last went, heavy with dew,
Back to the place from which she came—
Where the bird was before it flew,
Where the flower was before it grew,
Where bird and flower were one and the same.

And thus it is I know so well
Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.
You have only to ask me, and I can tell.
No, not vainly there did I dwell,
Nor vainly listen all the night long.

A DREAM PANG

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
You shook your pensive head as who should say,
“I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.”

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

IN NEGLECT

They leave us so to the way we took,
As two in whom they were proved mistaken,
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

THE VANTAGE POINT

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.

MOWING

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound-
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.5
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

GOING FOR WATER

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;

Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

REVELATION

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

‘Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

THE TRIAL BY EXISTENCE

Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
Wide fields of asphodel fore’er,6
To find that the utmost reward
Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white
And is not shattered into dyes,
The light for ever is morning light;
The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angel hosts with freshness go,
And seek with laughter what to brave;—
And binding all is the hushed snow
Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff—top is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
In streams and cross- and counter-streams
Can but give ear to that sweet cry
For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned
To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
Will gladly give up paradise.

And a white shimmering concourse rolls
Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,
Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
And tenderly, life’s little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
Setting the thing that is supreme.

Nor is there wanting in the press
Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in its nakedness,
Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth’s unhonored things
Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:
“One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
Admits no memory of choice,
Or the woe were not earthly woe
To which you give the assenting voice.”

And so the choice must be again,
But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
Spirit to matter till death come.

’Tis of the essence of life here,
Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
Bearing it crushed and mystified.

IN EQUAL SACRIFICE

Thus of old the Douglas did:
He left his land as he was bid
With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce
In a golden case with a golden lid,

To carry the same to the Holy Land;
By which we see and understand
That that was the place to carry a heart
At loyalty and love’s command,

And that was the case to carry it in.
The Douglas had not far to win
Before he came to the land of Spain,
Where long a holy war had been

Against the too-victorious Moor;
And there his courage could not endure
Not to strike a blow for God
Before he made his errand sure.

And ever it was intended so,
That a man for God should strike a blow,
No matter the heart he has in charge
For the Holy Land where hearts should go.

But when in battle the foe were met,
The Douglas found him sore beset,
With only strength of the fighting arm
For one more battle passage yet—

And that as vain to save the day
As bring his body safe away—
Only a signal deed to do
And a last sounding word to say.

The heart he wore in a golden chain
He swung and flung forth into the plain,
And followed it crying “Heart or death!”
And fighting over it perished fain.

So may another do of right,
Give a heart to the hopeless fight,
The more of right the more he loves;
So may another redouble might

For a few swift gleams of the angry brand,
Scorning greatly not to demand
In equal sacrifice with his
The heart he bore to the Holy Land.

THE TUFT OF FLOWERS

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

“As all must be,” I said within my heart,
“Whether they work together or apart.”

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a ’wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

“Men work together,” I told him from the heart,
“Whether they work together or apart.”

SPOILS OF THE DEAD

Two fairies it was
On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
With the flowers to play.

The flowers they plucked
They cast on the ground
For others, and those
For still others they found.

Flower-guided it was
That they came as they ran
On something that lay
In the shape of a man.

The snow must have made
The feathery bed
When this one fell
On the sleep of the dead.

But the snow was gone
A long time ago,
And the body he wore
Nigh gone with the snow.

The fairies drew near
And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
And a chain at his side.

They knelt in the leaves
And eerily played
With the glittering things,
And were not afraid.

And when they went home
To hide in their burrow,
They took them along
To play with to-morrow.

When you came on death,
Did you not come flower-guided
Like the elves in the wood?
I remember that I did.

But I recognised death
With sorrow and dread,
And I hated and hate
The spoils of the dead.

PAN WITH US

Pan came out of the woods one day,—
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they,—
And stood in the sun and looked his fill
At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half—wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails
Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For a sylvan sign that the blue jay’s screech
And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
And the fragile bluets clustered there
Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth
And ravelled a flower and looked away—
Play? Play?—What should he play?

THE DEMIURGE’S LAUGH

It was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon’s trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.
It was just as the light was beginning to fail
That I suddenly heard—all I needed to hear:
It has lasted me many and many a year.

The sound was behind me instead of before,
A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As of one who utterly couldn’t care.
The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.

I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
I felt as a fool to have been so caught,
And checked my steps to make pretence
It was something among the leaves I sought
(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).
Thereafter I sat me against a tree.

Now CLOSE THE WINDOWS

Now close the windows and hush all the fields;
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
It will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

In Hardwood Groves

The same leaves over and over again! 

They fall from giving shade above, 

To make one texture of faded brown 

And fit the earth like a leather glove.    

Before the leaves can mount again 

To fill the trees with another shade, 

They must go down past things coming up. 

They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put 

Beneath the feet of dancing flowers. 

However it is in some other world

I know that this is the way in ours. 

A LINE—STORM SONG

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,

The road is forlorn all day,

Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,

And the hoof-prints vanish away.

The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,

Expend their bloom in vain.

Come over the hills and far with me,

And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves

In the wood-world’s torn despair

Than now these numberless years the elves,

Although they are no less there:

All song of the woods is crushed like some

Wild, easily shattered rose.

Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,

Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind

And bruit our singing down,

And the shallow waters aflutter with wind

From which to gather your gown.

What matter if we go clear to the west,

And come not through dry-shod?

For wilding brooch shall wet your breast

The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells

But it seems like the sea’s return

To the ancient lands where it left the shells

Before the age of the fern;

And it seems like the time when after doubt

Our love came back amain.

Oh, come forth into the storm and rout

And be my love in the rain.

October

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

To-morrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow,

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know;

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

MY BUTTERFLY

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun—assaulter, he
That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
(Nor is it sad to thee!)
Save only me
There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.

The gray grass is not dappled with the snow;
Its two banks have not shut upon the river;
But it is long ago—
It seems forever—
Since first I saw thee glance,
With all the dazzling other ones,
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

When that was, the soft mist
Of my regret hung not on all the land,
And I was glad for thee,
And glad for me, I wist.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,
With those great careless wings,
Nor yet did I.

And there were other things:
It seemed God let thee flutter from his gentle clasp:
Then fearful he had let thee win

Too far beyond him to be gathered in,
Snatched thee, o’er eager, with ungentle grasp.

Ah! I remember me
How once conspiracy was rife
Against my life—
The languor of it and the dreaming fond;
Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought,
The breeze three odors brought,
And a gem-flower waved in a wand!

Then when I was distraught
And could not speak,
Sidelong, full on my cheek,
What should that reckless zephyr fling
But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!

I found that wing broken to-day!
For thou art dead, I said,
And the strange birds say.
I found it with the withered leaves
Under the eaves.

RELUCTANCE

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question “Whither?”

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

------------

Boy’s Will, A (1913) - Deirdre Fagan

Frost’s first commercially published book was  
printed in 1913 by David Nutt of London and was  
dedicated to his wife Elinor. Frost was so exhila

rated that he wrote to friend and former student  
John Bartlett on January 30, 1913, and included a  
set of page proofs of the not-yet-printed book. The  
note accompanying it talked about how the book  
was “pretty near being the story of five years” of his  
life. He felt that the first poem of the book, “Into  
My Own” represented how he “went away from  
people (and college),” and “Tuft of Flowers”  
showed how he “came back to them.” The book  
was to “plot a curved line of flight,” as he wrote in  
his “Preface to Poems in This Is My Best.” Frost had  
used “Tuft of Flowers” to get his job at Pinkerton  
Academy, he once said, just as “little Tommy  
Tucker sang for his supper.”

One of the first responses to the book was Ezra  
Pound’s, which can be found in a letter to Alice  
Corbin Henderson, assistant of Harriet Monro of  
Poetry magazine: “Have just discovered another  
Amur’kn. Vurry Amurk’n, with, I think, the seeds of  
grace” (Parini, 128). Pound’s declaration was some

thing akin to Emerson’s of Whitman: “I greet you at  
the beginning of a great career.” Frank F. S. Flint  
also offered a favorable review. He admired Frost’s  
“direct observation of the object and immediate cor

relation with the emotion—spontaneity, subtlety in  
the evocation of moods, humour” and his “ear for  
silences” (Meyers, 102). Flint had thought that each  
poem was the expression‎ of one mood, or one emo

tion, or one idea, and it seems that he may have had  
such poems as “Into My Own,” “Waiting,” and  
“Reluctance,” in mind. Norman Douglas of the Eng

lish Review wrote that there was a “wild, racy flavour”  
to Frost’s poems and that “they sound that inevitable  
response to nature which is the hall-mark of true  
lyric feeling” (Thornton, 21).

The first edition of the book included glosses,  
or explanatory epigraphs, accompanying each  
poem. They were not included in later editions.  
An American edition of the book was not avail

able until 1915, when Henry Holt and Company of  
New York issued it simultaneously with North of  
Boston. The title was derived from the refrain in  
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth”:  
“ ‘a boy’s will is the wind’s will, / And the thoughts  
of youth are long, long thoughts.’ ” The nod to  
Longfellow demonstrated the kinship Frost felt  
with earlier American writers who also had made  
the American landscape and its themes central to  
their work.

Mark Richardson writes that A Boy’s Will should  
be regarded “as an effort on Frost’s part to find a  
voice among his poetic predecessors, not only of the  
nineteenth century but of earlier ones as well.” Many  
of the poems in this first volume, perhaps more so  
than any of Frost’s later collections, allude to the  
poems of the poets who preceded Frost, among them  
William Shakespeare, William Words worth, Thomas  
Hardy, Emily Dickinson, and others.

The book, while indicative of many of the  
themes associated with Frost, such as rural life,  
nature, individuality, philosophy, and others, does  
not contain many of his most anthologized poems,  
but it does hold some gems, such as “Into My Own,” 

“The Vantage Point,” and “Reluctance.” The book  
has many strengths as it establishes Frost’s voice (if  
a somewhat more youthful and indebted one), his  
subject matter, and his skill. Lewis H. Miller, Jr.,  
describes the design of the book as “thematic and  
dramatic” and holds that it “is unique to the Frost  
canon in its portrayal of a young, often immature  
speaker who develops and ripens as the poems  
unfold” (351). An unsigned review from September  
20, 1913, read, “We do not need to be told that the  
poet is a young man: the dew and the ecstasy—the  
audacity, too—of pristine vision are here” (Green

berg and Hepburn, 45).

A Boy’s Will was Frost’s first triumph, and with

out it he could not have gone on to publish the  
large number of immortal poems of the later books.

FURTHER READING 
Haynes, Donald T. “The Narrative Unity of A Boy’s  
Will,” Publications of the Modern Language Associa

tion of America 87, no. 3 (May 1972): 452–464. 
Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York:  
Houghton Mifflin, 1996. 
Miller, Lewis H., Jr. “Design and Drama in A Boy’s  
Will.” In Frost: Centennial Essays, edited by Jac  
Tharpe, 351–368. Jackson: University Press of Mis

sissippi, 1974. 
Parini, Jay. Robert Frost: A Life. New York: Holt, 1999. 
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The  
Poet and his Poetics. Chicago: University of Illinois  
Press, 1997, 104–109. 
Sanders, David. “Frost’s North of Boston, Its Language,  
Its People, Its Poet,” Journal of Modern Literature 
27, nos. 1–2 (Fall 2003): 70–78. 
Thornton, Richard, ed. Recognition of Robert Frost:  
Twenty-fifth Anniversary. New York: Holt, 1937. 
“Unsigned Review of A Boy’s Will.” In Robert Frost: An  
Introduction, edited by Robert A. Greenberg, and  
James G. Hepburn, 45–46. New York: Holt, Rine

hart and Winston, 1961.

-------------

literary influences - Deirdre Fagan

In the “Paris Review Inter

view with Richard Poirier,” Frost, even when  
pressed by Poirier, finds it difficult, or at least pre

tends to find it difficult, to identify influences for  
his work, except what he had read, such as Latin  
and Greek poetry. Poirier wanted to know whom  
Frost admired, and the poet said coyly that he “was  
the enemy of that theory.” Poirier hoped to find out  
for whom he might have felt an affinity, say, Edwin  
Arlington Robinson or Wallace Stevens, both  
acquaintances of Frost’s. “I don’t know who you’d  
connect me with,” Frost said, dodging the inquiries  
again. He explains that he appreciates certain  
poems rather than the entire work of individual  
poets. He finds a poem he likes in an anthology and  
goes looking for more and finds “[n]othing. Just a  
couple like that and that’s all.” He resists influence  
and comparison. He has fondness for some, but  
that is where he wants to leave it.

Given Frost’s resistance to such categorical asso

ciations, it makes most sense to look to what the  
poet revealed about his influences through his  
poetry and the books he admired. Those sources  
are more telling. While he dodged inquiries about  
how and by whom his style was influenced, he did  
not hesitate to say what writers and works he most  
respected. In the November 30, 1958, issue of the  
Chicago Tribune he offered a list of the five books  
that had meant the most to him: The Old Testa

ment, The Odyssey, the poems of Catullus, Edward  
Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
and John Lloyd Stevens’s Incidents of Travel in  
Yucatan. When asked to contribute to a volume  
edited by Edward Weeks, Books We Like: Sixty-two  
Answers to the Question (1936), he again listed The  
Odyssey as well as Robinson Crusoe; Henry David  
Thoreau’s Walden; the tales of Edgar Allan Poe;  
The Oxford Book of English Verse (presumably the  
1924 edition, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch);  
Modern American and British Poetry, edited by his  
friend Louis Untermeyer; James Fenimore Cooper’s  
The Last of the Mohicans; Anthony Hope’s The Pris

oner of Zenda; Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book; 
and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays and poems.

Frost was well read, but these lists do not iden

tify influences so much as interests, and his inter

ests were various. He was particularly interested in  
philosophy, above all William James, and in sci

ence. During a reading he once identified the Sci

entific American as the “best magazine in the whole  
world,” though he joked that he was “not taking  
subscriptions for it.” He also identified Charles  
Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) to an  
audience as a “better book” than Darwin’s The Ori

gin of Species (1859) and as one of the “best books  
you don’t read.” He also had a great appreciation  
for Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (1861). But these  
are scattered and isolated selections.

Frost makes allusions in his poetry to the Bible,  
Greek and Latin poetry, English poetry (especially  
the romantics), American poetry, Greek and Roman  
mythology, Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson,  
Henry David Thoreau, philosophers, mathemati

cians, historians, inventors, sculptors, painters, and  
friends. He draws on American folklore and Mother  
Goose nursery rhymes. His allusions are as various  
as the books he read.

Frost’s early style was marked by those who pre

ceded him. In his “Introduction to the Arts Anthol

ogy: Dartmouth Verse,” he asserts that the poet  
“has to begin as a cloud of all the other poets he  
ever read. That can’t be helped,” and it was the  
same for him. Even the title of his first book was  
derived from the refrain in Henry Wadsworth  
Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth”: “A boy’s will is the  
wind’s will, / And the thoughts of youth are long,  
long thoughts.” The nod to Longfellow demon

strates the kinship Frost felt with earlier American  
writers who also had made the American landscape  
and its themes central to their work. Among these  
was Emily Dickinson, whom Frost admired greatly.  
When courting his future wife, Elinor Miriam  
White, during high school, he presented her with a  
recent posthumously published volume of Dickin

son’s poems. Of contemporary poets, she and  
Edward Rowland Sill were favorites (the second  
book he gave to Elinor was Sill’s), as was Thomas  
Hardy, whom he once referred to as his “man.” He 

shared a kinship with Edward Arlington Robinson,  
made all the more evident by the strain in their  
relationship with each other. He appreciated Wal

lace Stevens, whom he met in Key West, FLORIDA,  
and when Stevens remarked after a long evening of  
drinking that Frost was “too academic,” Frost  
quipped that Stevens wrote “bric-a-brac.” Frost  
criticized Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot but respected  
them both. He mentored and was proud of Edward  
Thomas, his young poet friend who was killed in  
World War I.

Frost was influenced and was an influence, but it  
is difficult to nail down details. In his relationship to  
nature there are evidences of Emerson and Thoreau.  
When receiving the Emerson-Thoreau Gold Medal  
from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,  
Frost admitted that Emerson affected him early on  
and that his first thoughts about his own language  
came from Emerson, saying: “I took Emerson’s prose  
and verse as my illustration,” and that Emerson  
“blended praise and dispraise of the country people  
of New Hampshire,” as Frost himself did (“On Emer

son”). But he avoided being too closely tied to Emer

son. There are also hints of Hardy and Dickinson in  
his relationship to nature, though Hardy is more dire  
and Dickinson more romantic. In his “Introduction  
to E. A. Robinson’s King Jasper” Frost also reveals a  
kinship to Robinson. They each had an ear tuned to  
the vernacular and to individual experience. In many  
respects Frost’s mood is closest to Hardy’s and his  
style to Robinson’s, but Frost had such a profound  
influence on American poetry precisely because his  
own influences are hard to pin down.

Frost was not a product of his reading; he was a  
new American product. When he came into his  
own, his verse was distinct and powerful, embed

ding him forever in the American poetic landscape  
not as the influenced but as the influential.