Other Poetry

• Waiting
  

  What things for dream there are when specter-like,
  Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
  I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
  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 nighthawks peopling heaven,
  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,
  On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
  In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
  That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
  After an interval, his instrument,
  And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there;
  And on the worn book of old-golden song
  I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
  And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
  But on the memor of one absent, most,
  For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

  
  In Other - 114 days ago
• The Secret Sits
  We dance round in a ring and suppose,
  But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
  In Other - 114 days ago
• 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 tother, as just as fair,
  And having perhaps the better claim,
  Because it was grassy ans 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.

  
  In Other - 114 days ago
• The Armful
  For every parcel I stoop down to seize
  I lose some other off my arms and knees,
  And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
  Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once
  Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
  With all I have to hold with hand and mind
  And heart, if need be, I will do my best.
  To keep their building balanced at my breast.
  I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
  Then sit down in the middle of them all.
  I had to drop the armful in the road
  And try to stack them in a better load.
  In Other - 114 days ago
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
  

  Whose woods these are I think I know.
  His house is in the village though;
  He will not see me stopping here
  To watch his woods fill up with snow.

  My little horse must think it queer
  To stop without a farmhouse near
  Between the woods and frozen lake
  The darkest evening of the year.

  He gives his harness bells a shake
  To ask if there is some mistake.
  The only other sound's the sweep
  Of the easy wind and downy flake.

  The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
  But I have promises to keep,
  And miles to go before I sleep,
  And miles to go before I sleep.

  
  In Other - 114 days ago
• 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?

  
  In Other - 114 days ago
• Nothing Gold Can Stay
  Nature's first green is gold,
  Her hardest hue to hold.
  Her early leaf's a flower;
  But only so an hour.
  Then leaf subsides to leaf.
  So Eden sank to grief,
  So dawn goes down to day.
  Nothing gold can stay.
  In Other - 115 days ago
• Mending Wall
  Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
  That sends the frozen ground swell under it,
  And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
  ANd makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
  The work of hunters is another thing:
  I have come after them and made repair
  Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
  But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
  To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
  No one has seen them made or heard them made,
  But at spring mending time we find them there.
  I let my neighbor know beyong the hill;
  And on a day we meet to walk the line
  And set the wall between us once again.
  We keep the wall between us as we go.
  To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
  And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
  We have to use a spell to make them balance:
  "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
  We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
  Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
  One on a side. It comes to little more:
  There where it is we do not need the wall:
  He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
  My apple trees will never get across
  And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
  He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
  Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
  If I could put a notion in his head:
  "Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
  Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
  Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
  What I was walling in or walling out,
  And to whom I was like to give offense.
  Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
  That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
  But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
  He said it for himself. I see him there
  Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
  In each hand, like an old stone savage armed.
  He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
  Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
  He will not go behind his father's saying,
  And he likes having though of it so well
  He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
  In Other - 115 days ago
• Hyla Brook
  By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
  Sought for much after that, it will be found
  Either to have gone groping underground
  (And taken with it all the Hyla breed
  That shouted in the mist a month ago,
  Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
  Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
  Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
  Even against the way its waters went.
  Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
  Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--
  A brook to none but who remember long.
  This as it will be seen is other far
  Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
  We love the things we love for what they are.
  In Other - 115 days ago
• Fire and Ice
  Some say the world will end in fire,
  Some say in ice.
  From what I've tasted of desire
  I hold with those who favor fire.
  But if I had to perish twice,
  I think I know enough of hate
  To say thay for destruction ice
  Is also great
  And would suffice.
  In Other - 115 days ago
• Into My Own
  

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

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

  I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
  Or those should not set forth upon my track
  To overtake me, who should miss me here
  And 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.

  
  In Other - 115 days ago
• 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 Other - 115 days ago
• 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 Other - 115 days ago
• "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 behing 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 him in her apron
  To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
  As if it meant to prove saws know 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!
  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 was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -
  The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
  So. 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 a fright.
  No one believed. They listened to 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.
  
  In Other - 115 days ago