The Road Not Taken.

by Robert Frost.

1

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 ap.r.o.n 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- http://collegebookshelf.net3 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.

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 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 had 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; http://collegebookshelf.net5 So she had to work it all by hand, But she don't mind now.

A great deal of none.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load, Now when she sees in the village How village things go, Just when it seems to come in right, She says, "I know!

And hid from anyone pa.s.sing. And then she begged the seed. She says she thinks she planted one Of all things but weed.

"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.

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 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, 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.

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 gla.s.s I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of h.o.a.ry gra.s.s. It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 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.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

http://collegebookshelf.net7 And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound 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 thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep.

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-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal sh.e.l.ls Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust- Such heaps of broken gla.s.s 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 (Now am I free to be poetical?) http://collegebookshelf.net9 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 http://collegebookshelf.net11 And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and s.n.a.t.c.h 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.

Dust of Snow The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

http://collegebookshelf.net13 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, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

For Once, Then Something Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven G.o.dlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths-and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water.

One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Good-bye, and Keep Cold This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark And cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. (If certain it wouldn't be idle to call I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall And warn them away with a stick for a gun.) I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. (We made it secure against being, I hope, By setting it out on a northerly slope.) No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. "How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees, Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these, http://collegebookshelf.net15 And such as is done to their wood with an axe- Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night And think of an orchard's arboreal plight When slowly (and n.o.body comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to G.o.d.

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 pa.s.s 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 neighbour 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.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly b.a.l.l.s 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 out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: http://collegebookshelf.net17 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 neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? 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 offence.

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 thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

http://collegebookshelf.net19 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 pa.s.s A ship keeps raising its hull; The wetter ground like gla.s.s Reflects a standing gull.

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.

The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be- The water comes ash.o.r.e, And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far. They cannot look in deep. But when was that ever a bar To any watch they keep?

http://collegebookshelf.net21 Once By The Pacific The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the sh.o.r.e That water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The sh.o.r.e was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before G.o.d's last Put out the Light was spoken.

Putting in the Seed You come to fetch me from my work to-night 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 pa.s.sion 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 st.u.r.dy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. http://collegebookshelf.net23 Range-Finding 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.

A b.u.t.terfly 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 pa.s.sing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

Spring Pools These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, And yet not out by any brook or river, But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. The trees that have it in their pent-up buds To darken nature and be summer woods- Let them think twice before they use their powers To blot out and drink up and sweep away These flowery waters and these watery flowers From snow that melted only yesterday.

- http://collegebookshelf.net25 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.

The Death of the Hired Man Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step, She ran on tip-toe down the darkened pa.s.sage To meet him in the doorway with the news And put him on his guard. "Silas is back." She pushed him outward with her through the door And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said.

She took the market things from Warren's arms And set them on the porch, then drew him down To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. 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, And miles to go before I sleep. "When was I ever anything but kind to him? But I'll not have the fellow back," he said. "I told him so last haying, didn't I?

'If he left then,' I said, 'that ended it.' What good is he? Who else will harbour him At his age for the little he can do?

What help he is there's no depending on. Off he goes always when I need him most. 'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay, Enough at least to buy tobacco with, So he won't have to beg and be beholden.' 'All right,' I say, 'I can't afford to pay http://collegebookshelf.net27 Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.'

'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will have to.' I shouldn't mind his bettering himself If that was what it was. You can be certain, When he begins like that, there's someone at him Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,- In haying time, when any help is scarce.

In winter he comes back to us. I'm done."

Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off."

"What did he say? Did he say anything?"

"But little."

"Anything? Mary, confess He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me."

"Sh! not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said. "Warren!"

"I want him to: he'll have to soon or late." "But did he? I just want to know."

"He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove. When I came up from Rowe's I found him here, Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep, A miserable sight, and frightening, too- You needn't smile-I didn't recognise him- I wasn't looking for him-and he's changed. Wait till you see."

"Where did you say he'd been?"

"He didn't say. I dragged him to the house, And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke. I tried to make him talk about his travels. "Of course he did. What would you have him say? Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save his self-respect. He added, if you really care to know, He meant to clear the upper pasture, too. That sounds like something you have heard before? Warren, I wish you could have heard the way He jumbled everything. I stopped to look Two or three times-he made me feel so queer- To see if he was talking in his sleep.

He ran on Harold Wilson-you remember- The boy you had in haying four years since. He's finished school, and teaching in his college.

http://collegebookshelf.net29 Silas declares you'll have to get him back. He says they two will make a team for work: Between them they will lay this farm as smooth! The way he mixed that in with other things. He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft On education-you know how they fought All through July under the blazing sun, Silas up on the cart to build the load, Harold along beside to pitch it on."

"Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot." He wanted to go over that. But most of all He thinks if he could have another chance To teach him how to build a load of hay--"