Birches - Robert Frost

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.

Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows--

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate wilfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Robert Frost

Wild Grapes (from 『New Hampshire』, 1923)

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 myself

Equally 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 girl

My brother could not always leave at home.

But that beginning was wiped out in fear

The day I swung suspended with the grapes,

And was come after like Eurydice

And brought down safely from the upper regions;

And the life I live now's an extra life

I can waste as I please on whom I please.

So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,

And give myself out as two different ages,

One of them five years younger than I look―

One day my brother led me to a glade

Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,

Wearing a thin headdress 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 be

Bunches 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 first

Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter

And 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 earth

And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes.

"Here, take a treetop. 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.

Then minute it was left with me alone,

It caught me up as if I were the fish

And it the fishpole. So I was translated,

To loud cries from my brother of "Let go!

Don't you know anything, you girl? Let go!"

But I, with something of the baby grip

Acquired ancestrally in just such trees

When wilder mothers than our wildest now

Hung babies out on branched by the hands

To 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 reduced

To 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 fox

By growing where it shouldn't―on a birch,

Where a fox wouldn't think to look for it―

Just then come you and I to gather it.

Only you have the advantage of the grapes

In one way: you have one more stem to cling by,

And some 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 ears

Against 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 feet

And 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't

Be run off with by birch trees into space."

It wasn't my not weighing anything

So 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 me

That I need learn to let go with the heart.

Reluctance(from 『A Boy's Will』, 1913)

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 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 "Wither?"

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?

Birches  vs Wild Grapes vs Reluctance

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MOUNTAIN INTERVAL

The Road Not Taken

Christmas Tree

An Old Man's Winter Night

The Exposed Nest

A Patch of Old Snow

In the Home Stretch

The Telephone

Meeting and Passing

Hyla Brook

The Oven Bird

Bond and Free

Birches

Pea Brush

Putting in the Seed

A Time to Talk

The Cow in Apple Time

An Encounter

Range-Finding

The Hill Wife

I. Loneliness

II. House Fear

     III. The Smile

IV. The Oft-Repeated Dream

     V. The Impulse

The Bonfire

A Girl's Garden

    Locked Out

Last Word of a Bluebird

”Out, Out―"

Brown's Descent

The Gum-Gatherer

The Line-Gang

The Vanishing Red

Snow

The Sound of Trees

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The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I―

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 

Christmas Trees

      A Christmas circular letter

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out,

A-buttoning coats, to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods―the young fir balsams like a place

\here houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn't thought of them as Christmas trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I'd hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees, except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth―

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine,

I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while." 

"I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over." 

"You could look

But don't expect I'm going to let you have them." 

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer's moderation, "That would do."

I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. 

                               He said, "A thousand." 

"A thousand Christmas trees!―at what apiece?" 

He felt some need of softening that to me:

"A thousand trees woujld come to thirty dollars." 

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece)―

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough. 

A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.

I can't help wishing I could send you one

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted neat them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him―at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping here, he scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon―such as she was,

So late-arising―to the broken moon,

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man―one man―can't keep a house,

A farm, a countryside, of it he can,

It's thus he does it of a winter night.  

The Exposed Nest

You were forever finding some new play.

So when I saw you down on hands and knees

In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,

Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,

I went to show you how to make it stay,

If that was your idea, against the breeze,

And, if you asked me, even help pretend

To make it root again and grow afresh.

But 'twas no make believe with you today,

Nor was the grass itself your real concern,

Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,

Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.

'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground

The cutter bar had just gone champing over

(Miraculously without tasting flesh)

And left defenseless to the heat and light.

You wanted to restore them to their right

Of something interposed between their sight

And too much world at once―could means be found.

The way the nest-full every time we stirred

Stood up to us as to a mother-bird

Whose coming home has been too long deferred,

Made me ask would the mother-bird return

And care for them in such a change of scene,

And might our meddling make her more afraid.

That was a thing we could not wait to learn.

We saw the risk we took in doing good,

But dared not spare to do the best we could

Though harm should come of it; so built the screen

You had begun, and gave them back their shade.

All this to prove we cared. Why is there then

No more to tell? We turned to other things.

I haven't any memory―have you?―

Of ever coming to the place again

To see if the birds lived the first night through,

And so at last to learn to use their wings.

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner,

    That I should have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

    Had brought to rest. 

It is speckled with grime as if

    Small print overspread it,

The news of a day I've forgotten―

    If I ever read it.

In the Home Stretch 

She stood against the kitchen sink, and looked

Over the sink out through a dusty window

At 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 people

In other chairs, and something, come to look,

For every room a house has―parlor, bedroom,

And dining room―thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.

And now and then a smudged, infernal face

Looked in a door behind her and addressed

Her back. She always answered without turning.  

"Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?" 

"Put it on top of something that's on top

Of something else," she laughed. "Oh, put it where

You can tonight, and go. It's almost dark;

You must be getting started back to town." 

Another blackened face thrust in and looked

And 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 lady

More than so many times make me a lady

In common law, I wonder." 

                               "But I ask,

What are you seeing out the window, lady?" 

"What I'll be seeing more of in the years

To come as here I stand and go the round

Of many plates with towels many times."  

"And what is that? You only put me off." 

"Rank weeds that love the water from the dishpan

More than some women like the dishpan, Joe;

A little stretch of mowing field for you;

Not much of that until I come to woods

That end all. And it's scarce enough to call

A view." 

             "And yet you think you like it, dear?" 

"That's what you're so concerned to know! You hope

I like it.―Bang goes something big away

Off there upstairs. The very tread of men

As great as those is shattering to the frame

Of such a little house. Once left alone,

You and I, dear, will go with softer steps

Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none

But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands

Will ever slam the doors." 

                        "I think you see

More 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 go

In 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 off

So ran together that I didn't try to.

It can scarce be that they would be in number

We'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 return

To lighted city streets we, too, have known,

But now are giving up for country darkness." 

"Come from that window where you see too much,

And take a livelier view of things from here.

They're going. Watch this husky swarming up

Over the wheel into the sky-high seat,

Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose

At the flame burning downward as he sucks it." 

"See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof

How dark it's getting. Can you tell what time

It 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 we

To everything. Her light won't last us long.

It's something, though, to know we're going to have her

Night after night and stronger every night

To 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 lamp

And oil are buried out of reach? 

                                    Again

The 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 then

Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,

So much too light and airy for their strength

It 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 begin

With 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 fellows

The city work to do. There's not enough

For 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 recede

Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say

He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy

Who 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 hands

Across 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 boots

And put each other bodily out of the house. 

"Good-by to them! We puzzle them. They think―

I don't know what they think we see in what

They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems

The back some farm presents us; and your woods

To northward from your window at the sink,

Waiting to steal a step on us whenever

We drop our eyes or turn to other things,

As in the game 'ten-step' the children play." 

"Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.

All they could say was 'God!' when you proposed

Their 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 so

As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.

They almost shook me." 

                       "It's all so much

What we have always wanted, I confess

Its seeming bad for a moment makes it seem

Even 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 house

Seems haunted or exposed. I always take

A personal interest in the locking up

At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off."

He fetched a dingy lantern from behind

A 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 just

As certain as the meals we've had. I wish

The 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 company

Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday

To look us over and give us his idea

Of 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 plan

To 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 chairs

Not 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 work

To empty one house of all household goods

And 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 know

If it is what you wanted, then how much

You 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 you 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 together

Amid 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 recite

All that's not new in where we find ourselves.

New is a word for fools in towns who think

Style upon style in dress and thought at last

Must 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 late

To drag you out for just a good-night call

On the old peach trees on the knoll, to grope

By starlight in the grass for a last peach

The neighbors may not have taken as their right

When 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 go

To go the round of apple, cherry, peach,

Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.

All of a farm it is." 

                       "I know this much:

I'm going to put you in your bed, if first

I have to make you build it. Come, the light." 

When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,

The fire got out through crannies in the stove

And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,

As much at home as if they'd always danced there. 

The Telephone 

"When I was just as far as I could walk

From here today,

There was an hour

All still

When leaning with my head against a flower

I heard you talk.

Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say―

You spoke from that flower on the windowsill―

Do you remember what it was you said?" 

"First tell me what it was you thought you heard." 

"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,

I leaned my head,

And holding by the stalk,

I listened and I thought I caught the word―

What was it? Did you call me by my name?

Or did you say―

Someone said 'Come'―i heard it as I bowed." 

"I may have thought as much, but not aloud." 

"Well, so I came." 

Meeting And Passing

As I went down the hill along the wall

There was a gate I had leaned at for the view

And had just turned from when I first saw you

As you came up the hill. We met. But all

We did that day was mingle great and small

Footprints in summer dust as if we drew

The figure of our being less than two

But more than one as yet. Your parasol

Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.

And all the time we talked you seemed to see

Something down there to smile at in the dust.

(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)

Afterward I went past what you had passed

Before we met, and you what I had passed.

Hyla Brook

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.

Sought fro much after that, it will be found

Either to have gone groping underground

(And taken with it all the Hyla breed

That shouted in the mist a month ago,

Like ghost of sleigh bells in a ghost of snow)―

Or flourished and come up in jewelweed,

Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent,

Even against the way its waters went.

Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat―

A brook to none but who remember long.

This as it will be seen is other far

Than with brooks taken otherwise in song.

We love the things we love for what they are.

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past,

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what do make of a diminished thing.  

Bond and Free

Love has earth to which she clings

With hills and circling arms about―

Wall within wall to shut fear out.

But Thought has need of no such things,

For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings. 

On snow and sand and turf, I see

Where Love has left a printed trace

With straining in the world's embrace.

And such is Love and glad to be.

But Thought has shaken his ankles free. 

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom

And sits in Sirius' disc all night,

Till day makes him retrace his flight,

With smell of burning on every plume,

Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are.

Yet some say Love by being thrall

And simply staying possesses all

In several beauty that Thought fares far

To find fused in another star. 

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust―

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; thought once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter of fact about the ice storm,

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows―

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.  

Pea Brush

I walked down alone Sunday after church

To the place where John has been cutting trees,

To see for myself about the birch

He said I could have to bush my peas. 

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap

Was hot enough for the first of May,

And stifling hot with the odor of sap

From stumps still bleeding their life away. 

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill

Wherever the ground was low and wet,

The minute they heard my step went still

To watch me and see what I came to get. 

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!―

All fresh and sound from the recent ax.

Time someone came with cart and pair

And got them off the wild flowers' backs. 

They might be good for garden things

To 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 trillium

That had budded before the boughs were piled

And since it was coming up had to come.

Putting in the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work tonight

When supper's on the table, and we'll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.  

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don't stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven't hoed,

And shout from where I am, "What is it?"

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

The Cow in Apple Time

Something inspires the only cow of late

To make no more of a wall than an open gate,

And think no more of wall-builders than fools.

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.

She bellows on a knoll against the sky.

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

An Encounter

Once on the kind of day called "weather breeder,"

When the heat slowly hazes and the sun

By its own power seems to be undone,

I was half boring through, half climbing through

A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar

And scurf of plants, and weary and overheated,

And sorry I ever left the road I knew,

I paused and rested on a sort of hook

That had me by the coat as good as seated,

And since there was no other way to look,

Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,

Stood over me a resurrected tree,

A tree that had been down and raised again―

A barkless specter. He had halted too,

As if for feat of treading upon me.

I saw the strange position of his hands―

Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands

Of wire with something in it from men to men.

"You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays?

And what's the news you carry―if you know?

And tell me where you're off for―Montreal?

Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all.

Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways

Half looking for the orchid Calypso."

Range-Finding

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung

And cut a flower beside a groundbird's nest

Before it stained a single human breast.

The stricken flower bent double and so hung.

And still the bird revisited her young.

A butterfly its fall had dispossessed,

A moment sought in air his flower of rest,

Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

On the bare upland pasture there had spread

O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread

And straining cables wet with silver dew.

A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,

But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

The Hill Wife

       I. Loneliness

           Her Word

One ought not to have to care

   So much as you and I

Care when the birds come round the house

   To seem to say good-by;

Or care so much when they come back

   With whatever it is they sing;

The truth being we are as much

   Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here―

   With birds that fill their breasts

But with each other and themselves

   And their built or driven nests.

        II. House Fear

Always―I tell you this they learned―

Always at night when they returned

To the lonely house from far away,

To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,

They learned to rattle the lock and key

To give whatever might chance to be,

Warning and time to be off in flight:

And preferring the out- to the indoor night,

They learned to leave the house door wide

Until they had lit the lamp inside.

       III. The Smile

          Her Word

I didn't like the way he went away.

That smile! It never came of being gay.

Still he smiled―did you see him?―I was sure!

Perhaps because we gave him only bread

And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.

Perhaps because he let us give instead

Of seizing from us as he might have seized.

Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,

Or being very young (and he was pleased

To have a vision of us old and dead).

I wonder how far down the road he's got.

He's watching from the woods as like as not.

     IV. The Oft-Repeated Dream

She had no saying dark enough

   For the dark pine that kept

Forever trying the window latch

   Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands

   That with every futile pass

Made the great tree seem as a little bird

   Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,

   And only one of the two

Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream

   Of what the tree might do.

       V. The Impulse

It was too lonely for her there,

   And too wild,

And since there were but two of them,

   And no child,

And work was little in the house,

   She was free,

And followed where he furrowed field,

   Or felled tree.

She rested on a long and tossed

   The fresh chips,

With a song only to herself

   On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough

   Of black alder.

She strayed so far she scarcely heard

   When he called her―

And didn't answer―didn't speak―

   Or return.

She stood, and then she ran and hid

   In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked

   Everywhere,

And he asked at her mother's house

   Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that

   The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities

   Besides the grave.

The Bonfire

"Oh, let's go up the hill and scarce ourselves,

As reckless as the best of them tonight,

By setting fire to all the brush we piled

With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow.

Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe.

The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough

Down dark converging paths between the pines.

Let's not care what we do with it tonight.

Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile

The way we piled it. And let's be the talk

Of people brought to windows by a light

Thrown from somewhere against their wallpaper.

Rouse them all, both the free and not so free

With saying what they'd like to do to us

For what they'd better wait till we have done.

Let's all but bring to life this old volcano,

If that is what the mountain ever was―

And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will―"

"And scare you too?" the children said together.

"Why wouldn't it scare me to have a fire

Begin in smudge with ropy smoke, and know

That still, if I repent, I may recall it,

But in a moment not: a little spurt

Of burning fatness, and then nothing but

The fire itself can put it out, and that

By burning out, and before it burns out

It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars,

And sweeping round it with a flaming sword,

Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle―

Done so much and I know not how much more:

I mean it shall not do if I can bind it.

Well if it doesn't with its draft bring on

A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter,

As once it did with me upon an April.

The breezes were so spent with winter blowing

They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them

Short of the perch their languid flight was toward;

And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven

As I walked once around it in possession.

But the wind out-of-doors―you know the saying.

There came a gust. (You used to think the trees

Made wind by fanning, since you never knew

It blow but that you saw the trees in motion.)

Something or someone watching made that gust.

It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass

Of over-winter with the least tip-touch

Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand.

The place it reached to blackened instantly.

The black was almost all there was by daylight,

That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke―

And a flame slender as the hepaticas,

Bloodroot, and violets so soon to be now.

But the black spread like black death on the ground,

And I think the sky darkened with a cloud

Like winter and evening coming on together.

There were enough things to be thought of then.

Where the field stretches toward the north

And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it

To flames without twice thinking, where it verges

Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear

They might find fuel there, in withered brake,

Grass its full length, old silver goldenrod,

And alder and grape vine entanglement,

To leap the dusty deadline. For my own

I took what front there was beside, I knelt

And thrust hands in and held my face away.

Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating.

A board is the best weapon if you have it.

I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew,

And said out loud, I couldn't bide the smother

And heat so close in; but the thought of all

The woods and town on fire by me, and all

The town turned out to fight for me―that held me.

I trusted the brook barrier, but feared

The road would fail; and on that side the fire

Died out without a noise of crackling wood―

Of something more than tinder-grass and weed―

That brought me to my feet to hold it back

By leaning back myself, as if the reins

Were round my neck and I was at the plow.

I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread

Another color over a tenth the space

That I spread coal-black over in the time

It took me. Neighbors coming home from town

Couldn't believe that so much black had come there

While they had backs turned, that it hadn't been there

When they had passed an hour or so before

Going the other way and they not seen it.

They looked about for someone to have done it.

But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering

Where all my weariness had gone and why

I walked so light on air in heavy shoes

In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling.

Why wouldn't I be scared remembering that?"

"If it scares you, what will it do to us?"

"Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared,

What would you say to war if it should come?

That's what for reasons I should like to know―

If you can comfort me by any answer."

"Oh, but war's not for children―it's for men."

"Now we are digging almost down to China.

My dears, my dears, you thought that―we all thought it.

So your mistake was ours. Haven't you heard, though,

About the ships where war has found them out

At sea, about the towns where war has come

Through opening clouds at night with droning speed

Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels―

And children in the ships and in the towns?

Haven't you heard what we have lived to learn?

Nothing so new―something we had forgotten:

War is for everyone, for children too.

I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't.

The best way is to come uphill with me

And have our fire and laugh and be afraid."

A Girl's Garden

A neighbor of mine in the village

   Likes to tell how one spring

When she was a girl on the farm, she did

   A childlike thing.

One day she asked for her father

   To give her a garden plot

To plant and tend and reap herself,

   And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner

   He thought of an idle bit

Of walled-off ground where a shop has stood,

   And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you

   An ideal one-girl farm,

And give you a chance to put some strength

   On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden,

   Her father said, to plow;

So she had to work it all by hand,

   But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow

   Along a stretch of road;

But she always ran away and left

   Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.

   And then she begged the seed.

She says she thinks she planted one

   Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,

   Radishes, lettuce, peas,

Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,

   And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted

   That a cider-apple tree

In bearing there today is hers,

   Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany

   When all was said and done,

A little bit of everything,

   A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village

   How village things go,

Just when it seems to come in right,

   She says, "I know!

"It's as when I was a farmer … "

   Oh, never by way of advice!

And she never sins by telling the tale

   To the same person twice.

Locked Out

         As told to a child

When we locked up the house at night,

We always locked the flowers outside

And cut them off from window light.

The time I dreamed the door was tried

And brushed with buttons upon sleeves,

The flowers were out there with the thieves.

Yet nobody molested them!

We did find one nasturtium

Upon the steps with bitten stem.

I may have been to blame for that:

I always thought it must have been

Some flower I played with as I sat

At dusk to watch the moon down early.

The Last Word of a Bluebird

   As told to a child

As I went out a Crow

In a low voice said, "Oh,

I was looking for you.

How do you do?

I just came to tell you

To tell Lesley (will you?)

That her little Bluebird

Wanted me to bring word

That the north wind last night

That made the stars bright

And made ice on the trough

Almost made him cough

His tail feathers off.

He just had to fly!

But he sent her Good-by,

And said to be good,

And wear her red hood,

And look for skunk tracks

In the snow with an ax―

And do everything!

And perhaps in the spring

He would come back and sing."

“Out, Out"

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her apron

To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,

As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,

Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap―

He must have given the hand. However it was,

Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand,

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all―

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man's work, though a child at heart―

He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off―

The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then―the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little―less―nothing!―and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Brown's Descent

Brown lived at such a lofty farm

That everyone for miles could see

His lantern when he did his chores

In winter after half-past three.

And many must have seen him make

His wild descent from there one night,

'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything,

Describing rings of lantern-light.

Between the house and barn the gale

Got him by something he had on

And blew him out on the icy crust

That cased the world, and he was gone!

Walls were all buried, trees were few:

He saw no stay unless he stove

A hole in somewhere with his heel.

But though repeatedly he strove

And stamped and said things to himself,

And sometimes something seemed to yield,

He gained no foothold, but pursued

His journey down from field to field.

Sometimes he came with arms outspread

Like wings, revolving in the scene

Upon his longer axis, and

With no small dignity of mien.

Faster or slower as he chanced,

Sitting or standing as he chose,

According as he feared to risk

His neck, or thought to spare his clothes.

He never let the lantern drop.

And some exclaimed who saw afar

The figures he described with it,

"I wonder what those signals are

"Brown makes at such an hour of night!

He's celebrating something strange.

I wonder if he's sold his farm,

Or been made Master of the Grange."

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;

He fell and made the lantern rattle

(But saved the light from going out).

So halfway down he fought the battle,

Incredulous of his own bad luck.

And then becoming reconciled

To everything, he gave it up

And came down like a coasting child.

"Well―I―be―" that was all he said,

As standing in the river road

He looked back up the slippery slope

(Two miles it was) to his abode.

Sometimes as an authority

On motorcars, I'm asked if I

Should say our stock was petered out,

And this is my sincere reply:

Yankees are what they always were.

Don't think Brown ever gave up hope

Of getting home again because

He couldn't climb that slippery slope;

Or even thought of standing there

Until the January thaw

Should take the polish off the crust.

He bowed with grace to natural law,

And then went round it on his feet,

After the manner of our stock;

Not much concerned for those to whom,

At that particular time o'clock,

It must have looked as if the course

He steered was really straight away

From that which he was headed for―

Not much concerned for them, I say;

No more so than became a man―

And politician at odd seasons.

I've kept Brown standing in the cold

While I invested him with reasons;

But now he snapped his eyes three times;

Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's

'Bout out!" and took the long way home

By road, a matter of several miles.

The Gum-Gatherer

There overtook me and drew me in

To his downhill, early-morning stride,

And set me five miles on my road

Better than if he had had me ride,

A man with a swinging bag for load

And half the bag wound round his hand.

We talked like barking above the din

Of water we walked along beside.

And for my telling him where I'd been

And where I lived in mountain land

To be coming home the way I was,

He told me a little about himself.

He came from higher up in the pass

Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks

Is blocks split off the mountain mass―

And hopeless grist enough it looks

Ever to grind to soil for grass.

(The way it is will do for moss.)

There he had built his stolen shack.

It had to be a stolen shack

Because of the fears of fire and loss

That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:

Visions of half the world burned black

And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.

We know who when they come to town

Bring berries under the wagon seat,

Or a basket of eggs between their feet;

What this man brought in a cotton sack

Was gum, the gun of the mountain spruce.

He showed me lumps of the scented stuff

Like uncut jewels, dull and rough.

It comes to market golden brown;

But turns to pink between the teeth.

I told him this is a pleasant life,

To set your breast to the bark of trees

That all your days are dim beneath,

And reaching up with a little knife,

To loose the resin and take it down

And bring it to market when you please.

The Line-Gang

Here come the line-gang pioneering by.

They throw a forest down less cut than broken.

They plant dead trees for living, and the dead

They string together with a living thread.

They string an instrument against the sky

Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken

Will run as hushed as when they were a thought.

But in no hush they string it: they go past

With shouts afar to pull the cable taut,

To hold it hard until they make it fast,

To ease away―they have it. With a laugh,

An oath of towns that set the wild at naught,

They bring the telephone and telegraph.

The Vanishing Red

He is said to have been the last Red Man

In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed―

If you like to call such a sound a laugh.

But he gave no one else a laugher's license.

For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,

"Whose business―if I take it on myself,

Whose business―but why talk round the barn?―

When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with."

You can't get back and see it as he saw it.

It's too long a story to go into now.

You'd have to have been there and lived it.

Then you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter

Of who began it between the two races.

Some guttural exclamation of surprise

The Red Man gave in poking about the mill,

Over the great big thumping, shuffling millstone,

Disgusted the Miller physically as coming

From one who had no right to be heard from.

"Come, John," he said, "you want to see the wheel pit?"

He took him down below a cramping rafter,

And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,

The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,

Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.

Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it

That jangled even above the general noise,

And came upstairs alone―and gave that laugh,

And said something to a man with a meal sack

That the man with the meal sack didn't catch―then.

Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel pit all right.

Snow

The three stood listening to a fresh access

Of wind that caught against the house a moment,

Gulped snow, and then blew free again―the Coles,

Dressed, but disheveled from some hours of sleep;

Meserve, belittled in the great skin coat he wore.

Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward

Over his shoulder with his pipestem, saying,

"You can just see it glancing off the roof

Making a great scroll upward toward the sky,

Long enough for recording all our names on.―

I think I'll just call up my wife and tell her

I'm here―so far―and starting on again.

I'll call her softly so that if she's wise

And gone to sleep, she needn't wake to answer."

Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened.

"Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I'm at Cole's. I'm late.

I called you up to say Good-night from here

Before I went to say Good-morning there.―

I thought I would.―I know, but, Lett―I know―

I could, but what's the sense? The rest won't be

So bad.―Give me an hour for it.―Ho, ho,

Three hours to here! But that was all uphill;

The rest is down.―Why no, no, not a wallow:

They kept their heads and took their time to it

Like darlings, both of them. They're in the barn.―

My dear, I'm coming just the same. I didn't

Call you to ask you to invite me home.―"

He lingered for some word she wouldn't say,

Said it at last himself, "Good-night," and then,

Getting no answer, close the telephone.

The three stood in the lamplight round the table

With lowered eyes a moment till he said,

"I'll just see how the horses are."

                                "Yes, do,"

Both the Coles said together. Mrs. Cole

Added: "You can judge better after seeing.―

I want you here with me, Fred.―Leave him here,

Brother Meserve. You know to find your way

Out through the shed."

                    "I guess I know my way.

I guess I know where I can find my name

Carved in the shed to tell me who I am

If it don't tell me where I am. I used

To play―"

        "You tend your horses and come back.―

Fred Cole, you're going to let him!"

                         "Well, aren't you?

How can you help yourself?"

                     "I called him Brother.

Why did I call him that."

                            "It's right enough.

That's all you ever heard him called round here.

He seems to have lost off his Christian name."

"Christian enough I should call that myself.

He took no notice, did he? Well, at least

I didn't use it out of love of him,

The dear knows. I detest the thought of him―

With his ten children under ten years old.

I hate his wretched little Racker Sect,

All's ever I heard of it, which isn't much.

But that's not saying―look, Fred Cole, it's twelve,

Isn't it, now? He's been here half an hour.

He says he left the village store at nine:

Three hours to do four miles―a mile an hour

Or not much better. Why, it doesn't seem

As if a man could move that slow and move.

Try to think what he did with all that time.

And three miles more to go!"

                           "Don't let him go.

Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.

That sort of man talks straight-on all his life

From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf

To anything anyone else may say.

I should have thought, though, you could make him hear you."

"What is he doing out a night like this?

Why can't he stay at home?"

                             "He had to preach."

"It's no night to be out."

                                "He may be small,

He may be good, but one thing's sure, he's tough,"

"And strong of stale tobacco."

                             "He'll pull through."

"You only say so. Not another house

Or shelter to put into from this place

To theirs. I'm going to call his wife again."

"Wait and he may. Let's see what he will do.

Let's see if he will think of her again.

But then, I doubt he's thinking of himself.

He doesn't look on it as anything."

"He shan't go―there!"

                 "It is a night, my dear."

"One thing: he didn't drag God into it."

"He don't consider it a case for God."

“You think so, do you? You don't know the kind.

He's getting up a miracle this minute.

Privately―to himself, right now, he's thinking

He'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 care

What happens to him if it only takes

Some of the sanctimonious conceit

Out of one of those pious scalawags."

"Nonsense to that! You want to see him safe."

"You like the runt."

                         "Don't you a little?"

                                          "Well,

I don't like what he's doing, which is what

You like, and like him for."

                       "Oh, yes you do.

You like your fun as well as anyone;

Only you women have to put these airs on

To impress men. You've got us so ashamed

Of being men we can't look at a good fight

Between two boys and not feel bound to stop it.

Let the man freeze an ear or two, I say.―

He's here. I leave him all to you. Go in

And save his life.―All right, come in, Meserve.

Sit down, sit down. How did you find the horses?"

"Fine, fine."

             "And ready for some more? My wife here

Says 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 lamp

Or something not far from it on the table.

By straightening out and lifting a forefinger,

He pointed with his hand from where it lay

Like a white crumpled spider on his knee:

"That leaf there in your open book! It moved

Just then, I thought. It's stood erect like that,

There on the table, ever since I came,

Trying to turn itself backward or forward,

I've had my eye on it to make out which:

If forward, then it's with a friend's impatience―

You see I know―to get you on to things

It wants to see how you will take; if backward,

It's from regret for something you have passed

And failed to see the good of. Never mind,

Things must expect to come in front of us

A many times―I don't say just how many―

That varies with the things―before we see them.

One of the lies would make it out that nothing

Ever presents itself before us twice.

Where would we be at last if that were so?

Our very life depends on everything's

Recurring till we answer from within.

The thousandth time may prove the charm.―That leaf!

It can't turn either way. It needs the wind's help.

But the wind didn't move it if it moved.

It moved itself. The wind's at naught in here.

It couldn't stir so sensitively poised

A thing as that. It couldn't reach the lamp

To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,

Or blow a rumple in the collie's coat.

You make a little foursquare block of air,

Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all

The illimitable dark and cold and storm,

And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,

And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;

Though for all anyone can tell, repose

May be the thing you haven't, yet you give it.

So false it is that what we haven't we can't give;

So false, that what we always say is true.

I'll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.

It won't lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?"

"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 climbed

Since last we read the gauge."

                                 "It looks as if

Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat

And its eyes shut with overeagerness

To see what people found so interesting

In one another, and had gone to sleep

Of its own stupid lack of understanding.

Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff

Short off, and dies against the windowpane."

"Brother Meserve, take care, you'll scare yourself

More than you will us with such nightmare talk.

It's you it matters to, because it's you

Who have to go out into it alone."

"Let him talk, Helen, and perhaps he'll stay."

"Before you drop the curtain―I'm reminded:

You recollect the boy who came out here

To breathe the air one winter―had a room

Down at the Averys'? Well, one sunny morning

After a downy storm, he passed our place

And found me banking up the house with snow.

And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,

Piling it well above the windowsills.

The snow against the window caught his eye.

'Hey, that's a pretty thought'―those were his words―

'So you can think it's six feet deep outside,

While you sit warm and read up balanced rations.

You can't get too much winter in the winter.'

Those were his words. And he went home and all

But banked the daylight out of Avery's windows.

Now you and I would go to no such length.

At the same time you can't deny it makes

It not a mite worse, sitting here, we three,

Playing our fancy, to have the snow-line run

So high across the pane outside. There where

There is a sort of tunnel in the frost―

More like a tunnel than a hole―way down

At the far end of it you see a stir

And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift

Blown in the wind. I like that―I like that.

Well, now I leave you, people."

                              "Come, Meserve,

We thought you were deciding not to go―

The ways you found to say the praise of comfort

And being where you are. You want to stay."

"I'll own it's cold for such a fall of snow.

This house is frozen brittle, all except

This room you sit in. If you think the wind

Sounds further off, it's not because it's dying;

You're further under in the snow―that's all―

And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dust

It bursts against us at the chimney mouth,

And at the eaves. I like it from inside

More than I shall out in it. But the horses

Are rested and it's time to say Good-night,

And let you get to bed again. Good night,

Sorry I had to break in on your sleep."

"Lucky for you you did. Lucky for you

You had us for a halfway station

To stop at. If you were the kind of man

Paid heed to women, you'd take my advice

And for your family's sake stay where you are.

But what good is my saying it over and over?

You've done more than you had a right to think

You could do―now. You know the risk you take

In going on."

                 "Our snowstorms as a rule

Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although

I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep

Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,

Than the man fighting it to keep above it,

Yet think of the small birds at roost and not

In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?

Their bulk in water would be frozen rock

In no time out tonight. And yet tomorrow

They will come budding boughs from tree to tree,

Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee,

As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm."

"But why, when no one wants you to, go on?

Your wife―she doesn't want you to. We don't,

And you yourself don't want to. Who else is there?"

"Save us from being cornered by a woman.

Well, there's―" She told Fred afterward that in

The pause right there, she thought the dreaded word

Was coming. "God." But no, he only said,

"Well, there's―the storm. That says I must go on.

That wants me as a war might if it came.

Ask any man."

              He threw her that as something

To last her till he got outside the door.

He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off.

When Cole returned he found his wife still standing

Beside the table, near the open book,

Not reading it.

                  "Well, what kind of a man

Do you call that?" she said.

                          "He had the gift

Of words, or is it tongues I ought to say?"

"Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?"

"Or disregarding people's civil questions―

What? We've found out in one hour more about him

Than we had seeing him pass by in the road

A thousand times. If that's the way he preaches!

You didn't think you'd keep him after all.

Oh, I'm not blaming you. He didn't leave you

Much say in the matter, and I'm just as glad

We're not in for a night of him. No sleep

If he had stayed. The least thing set him going.

It's quiet as an empty church without him."

"But how much better off are we as it is?

We'll have to sit here till we know he's safe."

"Yes, I suppose you'll want to, but I shouldn't.

He knows what he can do, or he wouldn't try.

Get into bed I say, and get some rest.

He won't come back, and if he telephones,

It won't be for an hour or two."

                                 "Well then―

We can't be any help by sitting here

And living his flight 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 could

To keep him―though perhaps you didn't quite

Conceal a wish to see him show the spunk

To disobey you. Much his wife'll thank you."

"Fred, after all I said! You shan't make out

That it was any way but what it was.

Did she let on by any word she said

She didn't thank me?"

                          "When I told her 'Gone,'

'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 outdoors?"

"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 door

Wide open and the wind's blown out the lamp

And the fire's died and the room's dark and cold?"

"One of two things, either she's gone to bed

Or gone outdoors."

                "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!

Franctic 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 had gone out.

Of course she hasn't, though." They both sat down

Helpless. "There's nothing we can do till morning."

"Fred, I shan't let you think of going out."

"Hold on." The double bell began to chirp.

They started up. Fred took the telephone.

"Hello, Meserve. You're there, then!―and your wife?

Good! Why I asked―she didn't seem to answer.―

He says she went to let him in the barn.―

We're glad. Oh, say no more about it, man.

Drop in and see us when you're passing."

                                           "Well,

She has him, then, though what she wants him for

I don't see."

              "Possibly not for herself.

Maybe she only wants him for the children."

"The whole to-do seems to have been for nothing.

What spoiled our night was to him just his fun.

What did he come in for?―to talk and visit?

Thought he'd just call to tell us it was snowing.

If he thinks he is going to make our house

A halfway coffee house 'betwixt town and nowhere―"

"I thought you'd feel you'd been too much concerned."

"You think you haven't been concerned yourself."

"If you mean he was inconsiderate

To rout us out to think for him midnight

And then take our advice no more than nothing.

Why, I agree with you. But let's forgive him.

We've had a share in one night of his life.

What'll you bet he ever calls again?"

The Sound of Trees

I wonder about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone.