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Selected Poems
from
MODERN POEMS
An Introduction to Poetry
edited by
Richard Ellmann & Robert O'Clair
-----
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:
5
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,
10
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond 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.
15
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.
20
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
25
And eat the cones under his spine, 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
30
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 offensive.
Something there is that doesn't love a
wall,
35
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.
40
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 thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good
neighbors.'
45
1914
__________
After
Apple-Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some
bough.
5
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of
glass
10
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it
fell,
15
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing
clear.
20
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder away as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling
sound
25
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand fruit to
touch,
30
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
And so not carry the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing
carefully
35
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.
40
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
45
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
50
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,
55
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.
1916
__________
Range-Finding1
The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her
young.
5
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 mullen2 stalks a wheel of
thread
10
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.
1916
1. Frost
wrote to Amy Lowell, "Would it amuse you to learn that Range
Finding belongs to a set of war poems I wrote in time of profound
peace (circa 1902)? Most of them have gone the way of waste paper.
Range Finding was only saved from going the same way by Edward Thomas
who liked it . . . he thought it so good a description of No Man's
Land." Letters, p. 220.
2. An herb with
coarse stalks and small flowers.
__________
The Witch of Coös3
I stayed the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountain, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.
MOTHER. Folks think a
witch who has familiar spirits4
She could call up to pass a winter
evening,
5
But won't should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn't "Button, button,
Who's got the button," I would have them know.
SON. Mother can make
a common table rear
And kick with two legs like an army
mule.
10
MOTHER. And when I've
done it, what good have I done?
Rather than tip a table for you, let me
Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control5 once told me.
He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How could that be---I thought the dead were
souls---
15
He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious
That there's something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.
SON. You wouldn't
want to tell him what we have
Up attic,
mother?
20
MOTHER. Bones---a
skeleton.
SON. But the
headboard of mother's bed is pushed
Against the attic door: the door is nailed.
It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night,
Halting perplexed behind the
barrier
25
Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get
Is back into the cellar where it came from.
MOTHER. We'll never
let them, will we, son! We'll never!
SON. It left the
cellar forty years ago
And carried itself like a pile of
dishes
30
Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,
Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,
Another from the bedroom to the attic
Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it.
Father had gone upstairs; mother was
downstairs.
35
I was a baby: I don't know where I was.
MOTHER. The only
fault my husband found with me---
I went to sleep before I went to bed,
Especially in winter when the bed
Might just as well be ice and the clothes
snow.
40
The night the bones came up the cellar stairs
Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,
But left an open door to cool the room off
So as to sort of turn out of it.
I was just coming to myself
enough
45
To wonder where the cold was coming from,
When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom
And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.
The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on
When there was water in the cellar in
spring
50
Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or a little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile:
It wasn't anyone who could be
there.
55
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them---and good
reason.
60
My first impulse was to get to the knob
And hold the door. But the bones didn't try
The door; they halted helpless on the landing,
Waiting for things to happen in their favor.
The faintest restless rustling ran all through
them.
65
I never could have done the thing I did
If the wish hadn't been too strong in me
To see how they were mounted for this walk.
I had a vision of them put together
Not like a man, but like a
chandelier.
70
So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.
A moment he stood balancing with emotion,
And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire
Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his
eyes.)
75
Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,
The way he did in life once; but this time
I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,
And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all
directions.
80
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my button box---it must be there.)
I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile,
It's coming up to you." It had its choice
Of the door to the cellar or the
hall.
85
It took the hall door for the novelty,
And set off briskly for so slow a thing
Still going every which way in the joints, though,
So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,
From the slap I had just now given its
hand.
90
I listened till it almost climbed the stairs
From the hall to the only finished bedroom,
Before I got up to do anything;
Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door,
Toffile, for my sake!" "Company?" he
said,
95
"Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed."
So lying forward weakly on the handrail
I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light
(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own
I could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see
it.
100
It's with us in the room though. It's the bones."
"What bones?" "The cellar bones---out of the grave."
That made him throw his bare legs out to bed
And sit up by me and take hold of me.
I wanted to put out the light and
see
105
If I could see it, or else mow the room,
With our arms at the level of our knees,
And bring the chalk-pile down. "I'll tell you what---
It's looking for another door to try.
The uncommonly deep snow has made him
think
110
Of his old song, 'The Wild Colonial Boy.'
He always used to sing along the tote road.6
He's after an open door to get outdoors.
Let's trap him with an open door up attic."
Toffile agreed to that, and sure
enough,
115
Almost the moment he was given an opening,
The steps began to climb the attic stairs.
I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them.
"Quick!" I slammed to the door and held the knob.
"Toffile, get nails." I made him nail the door
shut
120
And push the headboard of the bed against it.
Then we asked was there anything
Up attic that we'd ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them have
it.
125
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a
shutter,
130
That's what I sit up in the dark to say---
To no one any more since Toffile died.
Let them stay in the attic since they went there.
I promised Toffile to be cruel to them
For helping them be cruel once to
him.
135
SON. We think they
had a grave down in the cellar.
MOTHER. We know they
had a grave down in the cellar.
SON. We never could
find out whose bones they were.
MOTHER. Yes, we could
too, son. Tell the truth for once.
They were a man's his father killed for
me.
140
I mean a man he killed instead of me.
The least I could do was to help dig their grave.
We were about it one night in the cellar.
Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him
To tell the truth, suppose the time had
come.
145
Son looks surprised to see me end a lie
We'd kept all these years between ourselves
So as to have it ready for outsiders.
But tonight I don't care enough to lie---
I don't remember why I ever
cared.
150
Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe
Could tell you why he ever cared himself. . . .
She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted
among the buttons poured out in her lap.
I verified the name next morning: Toffile.
155
The rural letter box said Toffile Lajway.
1923
3. A
county in New Hampshire.
4. A
"control" is a ghostly intermediary who, in spiritualist
séances, Facilitates the communication between the medium and the
spirits of the dead.
5. Supernatural
beings who attend and protect human witches.
6. A rough road for
hauling supplies, especially to a lumber camp.
__________
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 it had to perish
twice,
5
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice
1923
__________
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
5
To stop without a farmhouse hear
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.
10
The only other sound's the sweep
Of 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,
15
And miles to go before I sleep.7
1923
7. Frost
always insisted that the repetition of the line in the last stanza
was not supposed to invoke death but only to imply a somnolent
dreaminess in the speaker.
__________
To Earthward
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet
things,
5
The flow of---was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of
honeysuckle
10
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the
rose
15
It was that stung.
Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the
stain
20
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.
When stiff and sore and
scarred
25
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,
The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and
strength
30
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.
1923
__________
Acquainted with
the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain---and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his
beat
5
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound
of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say
good-by;
10
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor
right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
1928
__________
Two Tramps in Mud
Time
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard.
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he dropped
behind
5
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Goods blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping
block;
10
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose to my
soul,
15
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of
May.
20
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to
alight
25
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing
possum.
30
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a
brook,
35
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal
teeth.
40
The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised
aloft,
45
The grip on earth of outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last
night,
50
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an
ax,
55
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to
play
60
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right---agreed.
But yield who will to their
separation,
65
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal
stakes,
70
Is the deed over really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
1936
__________
Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it---it is
theirs.
5
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be
less---
10
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty
spaces
Between stars---on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer
home
15
To scare myself with my own desert places.
1936
__________
Neither Out Far
nor In Deep
The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to
pass
5
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.
The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may
be---
10
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a
bar
15
To any watch they keep?
1936
__________
Design8
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth---
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning
right,
5
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth---
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being
white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?9
10
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small.
1936
8. The
original version, entitled "In White," was written early in
1912 and sent in a letter, as Lawrence Thompson points out. It read as
follows:
A dented spider like a snowdrop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white peace of lifeless satin cloth---
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight?
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth?
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue Brunella every child's delight?
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller's [miller-moth's]
plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?
9. The
name of a flower usually blue in color, thought to have medicinal
properties.
__________
Provide,
Provide
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,10
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and
good
5
For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your
own!
10
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on being simply true.
What worked for them might work for
you.
15
No memory of having starred
Atone for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your
side
20
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
1936
10. A
beautiful young woman who nursed King David in his old age.
__________
The Bearer of
Evil Tidings
The bearer of evil tidings,
When he was halfway there,
Remembered that evil tidings
Were a dangerous thing to bear.
So when he came to the
parting
5
Where one road led to the throne
And one went off to the mountains
And into the wild unknown,
He took the one to the mountains.
He ran through the Vale of
Cashmere,
10
He ran through the rhododendrons
Till he came to the land of Pamir.
And there in a precipice valley
A girl of his age he met
Took him home to her
bower,
15
Or he might be running yet.
She taught him her tribe's religion:
How ages and ages since
A princess en route from China
To marry a Persian
prince
20
Had been found with child; and her army
Had come to a troubled halt.
And though a god was the father
And nobody else at fault,
It had seemed discreet to remain
there
25
And neither go on not back.
So they stayed and declared a village
There in the land of Yak.
And the child that came of the princess
Established a royal
line,
30
And his mandates were given heed to
Because he was born divine.
And that was why there were people
On one Himalayan shelf;
And the bearer of evil
tidings
35
Decided to stay there himself.
At least he had this in common
With the race he chose to adopt:
They had both of them had their reasons
For stopping where they had
stopped.
40
As for his evil tidings,
Belshazzar's overthrow,
Why hurry to tell Belshazzar
What soon enough he would know?11
1936
11. Though
Frost uses the names of a real place (Pamir, bounded by Kashmir,
Afghanistan, China, and Russia) and a real person (Belshazzar, the
last great king of Babylonia), he invented the rest.
__________
The
Subverted Flower
She drew back; he was calm;
'It is this that had the power.'
And he lashed his open palm
With the tender-headed flower.
He smiled for her to
smile,
5
But she was either blind
Or willfully unkind.
He eyed her for a while
For a woman and a puzzle.
He flicked and flung the
flower,
10
And another sort of smile
Caught up like finger tips
The corners of his lips
And cracked his ragged muzzle.
She was standing to the
waist
15
In goldenrod and brake,12
Her shining hair displaced.
He stretched her either arm
As if she made it ache
To clasp her---not to
harm;
20
As if he could not spare
To touch her neck and hair.
'If this has come to us
And not to me alone---'
So she thought she heard him
say;
25
Though with every word he spoke
His lips were sucked and blown
And the effort made him choke
Like a tiger at a bone.
She had to lean
away.
30
She dared not stir a foot,
Lest movement should provoke
The demon of pursuit
That slumbers in a brute.
It was then her mother's
call
35
From inside the garden wall
Made her steal a look of fear
To see if he could hear
And would pounce to end it all
Before her mother
came.
40
She looked and saw the shame:
A hand hung like a paw,
An arm worked like a saw
As if to be persuasive,
An ingratiating
laugh
45
That cut the snout in half,
An eye become evasive.
A girl could only see
That a flower had marred a man,
But what she could not
see
50
Was that the flower might be
Other than base and fetid:
That the flower had done but part,
And what the flower began
Her own too meager
heart
55
Had terribly completed.
She looked and saw the worst.
And the dog or what it was,
Obeying bestial laws,
A coward save at
night,
60
Turned from the place and ran.
She heard him stumble first
And use his hands in flight.
She heard him bark outright.
And oh, for one so
young
65
The bitter words she spit
Like some tenacious bit
That will not leave the tongue.
She plucked her lips for it,
And still the horror
clung.
70
Her mother wiped the foam
From her chin, picked up her comb,
And drew her backward home.
1942
12. A
species of fern.
__________
The Gift
Outright
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still
colonials,
5
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of
living,
10
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
15
Such as she was, such as she would become.
1942
__________
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair. Modern Poems: An
Introduction to
Poetry. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1973, pp.
68-85.
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