Poems of Robert Frost. Large Collection, includes A Boy's Will, North of Boston and Mountain Interval

by Robert Frost

  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  The city had withdrawn into itself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

  Where 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 would 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 near 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 there, he scared it once again

  In clomping off;—and 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 fill a house,

  A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

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

  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, bed-room,

  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 to-night, 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 dish-pan

&nb
sp; More than some women like the dish-pan, 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 for me,

  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.

  “Goodby 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

  It’s 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 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.”