by Robert Frost
Selected
Early Poems
of
ROBERT FROST
COYOTE CANYON PRESS
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA
2009
A Note on the Texts
The texts published in this volume are those of the first American editions of A Boy’s Will, North of Boston, and Mountain Interval.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Boy's Will
Into My Own
The youth is persuaded that he will be rather more than less himself for having forsworn the world.
Ghost House
He is happy in society of his choosing.
My November Guest
He is in love with being misunderstood.
Love and a Question
He is in doubt whether to admit real trouble to a place beside the hearth with love.
A Late Walk
He courts the autumnal mood.
Stars
There is no oversight of human affairs.
Storm Fear
He is afraid of his own isolation.
Wind and Window Flower
Out of the winter things he fashions a story of modern love.
To the Thawing Wind
He calls on change through the violence of the elements.
A Prayer in Spring
He discovers that the greatness of love lies not in forward-looking thoughts;
Flower-Gathering
nor yet in any spur it may be to ambition.
Rose-Pogonias
He is no dissenter from the ritualism of nature;
Asking for Roses
nor from the ritualism of youth which is make-believe.
Waiting—Afield at Dusk
He arrives at the turn of the year.
In a Vale
Out of old longings he fashions a story.
A Dream Pang
He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him.
In Neglect
He is scornful of folk his scorn cannot reach.
The Vantage Point
And again scornful, but there is no one hurt.
Mowing
He takes up life simply with the small tasks.
Going for Water
Revelation
He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since there is no help else;
The Trial by Existence
and to know definitely what he thinks about the soul;
In Equal Sacrifice
about love;
The Tuft of Flowers
about fellowship;
Spoils of the Dead
about death;
Pan with Us
about art (his own);
The Demiurge’s Laugh
about science.
Now Close the Door
It is time to make an end of speaking.
A Line-Storm Song
It is the autumnal mood with a difference.
October
He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were.
My Butterfly
There are things that can never be the same.
Reluctance
North of Boston
The Pasture
Mending Wall
The Death of the Hired Man
The Mountain
A Hundred Collars
Home Burial
The Black Cottage
Blueberries
A Servant To Servants
After Apple-Picking
The Code
The Generations of Men
The Housekeeper
The Fear
The Self-Seeker
The Wood-Pile
Good Hours
Mountain Interval
The Road Not Taken
Christmas Trees
An Old Man’s Winter Night
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
The Bonfire
A Girl’s Garden
The Exposed Nest
“Out, Out—”
Brown’s Descent or The Willy-Nilly Slide
The Gum-Gatherer
The Line-Gang
The Vanishing Red
Snow
The Sound of the Trees
A Boy’s Will
to
E. M. F.
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.
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:
&
nbsp; She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
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 lowest 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 cagèd 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,