Poetry Final Poems

"Ah, Are You Digging on my Grave?" Thomas Hardy

"Ah, are you digging on my grave My loved one? -- planting rue?" -- "No, yesterday he went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred. 'It cannot hurt her now,' he said, 'That I should not be true.'" "Then who is digging on my grave? My nearest dearest kin?" -- "Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use! What good will planting flowers produce? No tendance of her mound can loose Her spirit from Death's gin.' " "But some one digs upon my grave? My enemy? -- prodding sly?" -- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate That shuts on all flesh soon or late, She thought you no more worth her hate, And cares not where you lie." "Then, who is digging on my grave? Say -- since I have not guessed!" -- "O it is I, my mistress dear, Your little dog, who still lives near, And much I hope my movements here Have not disturbed your rest?" "Ah yes! You dig upon my grave . . . Why flashed it not on me That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find To equal among human kind A dog's fidelity!" "Mistress, I dug upon your grave To bury a bone, in case I should be hungry near this spot When passing on my daily trot. I am sorry, but I quite forgot It was your resting-place."

"In Church" Thomas Hardy

"And now to God the Father", he ends, And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, And emotion pervades the crowded aisles. Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door, And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more. The door swings softly ajar meanwhile, And a pupil of his in the Bible class, Who adores him as one without gloss or guile, Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile And re-enact at the vestry-glass Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show That had moved the congregation so.

"The Man he Killed" Thomas Hardy

"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps — No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown."

"Is my Team Ploughing?" AE Housman

"Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?" Ay, the horses trample, The harness jingles now; No change though you lie under The land you used to plough. "Is football playing Along the river shore, With lads to chase the leather, Now I stand up no more?" Ay the ball is flying, The lads play heart and soul; The goal stands up, the keeper Stands up to keep the goal. "Is my girl happy, That I thought hard to leave, And has she tired of weeping As she lies down at eve?" Ay, she lies down lightly, She lies not down to weep: Your girl is well contented. Be still, my lad, and sleep. "Is my friend hearty, Now I am thin and pine, And has he found to sleep in A better bed than mine?" Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man's sweetheart, Never ask me whose.

"The Ruined Maid" Thomas Hardy

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" — "O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she. — "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" — "Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she. — "At home in the barton you said thee' and thou,' And thik oon,' and theäs oon,' and t'other'; but now Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" — "Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she. — "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek, And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!" — "We never do work when we're ruined," said she. — "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" — "True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. — "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" — "My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be, Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she

"In The Moonlight" Thomas Hardy

"O LONELY workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave there were? "If your great gaunt eyes so importune Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, 5 Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!" "Why, fool, it is what I would rather see Than all the living folk there be; But alas, there is no such joy for me!" "Ah—she was one you loved, no doubt, 10 Through good and evil, through rain and drought, And when she passed, all your sun went out?" "Nay: she was the woman I did not love, Whom all the others were ranked above, Whom during her life I thought nothing of."

"In Tenebris" Thomas Hardy

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum." —Ps. ci. Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies. Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me. Birds faint in dread: I shall not lose old strength In the lone frost's black length: Strength long since fled! Leaves freeze to dun; But friends can not turn cold This season as of old For him with none. Tempests may scath; But love can not make smart Again this year his heart Who no heart hath. Black is night's cope; But death will not appal One who, past doubtings all, Waits in unhope.

"At the Drapers" Thomas Hardy

'I STOOD at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me. Well, when they deliver what you were shown I shall know nothing of it, believe me!' And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said, 'O, I didn't see you come in there-- Why couldn't you speak?--'Well, I didn't. I left That you should not notice I'd been there. 'You were viewing some lovely things. "Soon required For a widow, of latest fashion;" And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man Who had to be cold and ashen And screwed in a box before thy could dress you "In the latest new note in mourning," As they defined it. So, not to distress you, I left you to your adorning.'

"Terrence, This is Stupid Stuff" AE Housman

'TERENCE, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, 5 It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. 10 Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.' Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, 15 There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, 20 And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot 25 To see the world as the world's not. And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past: The mischief is that 'twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, 30 And carried half way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I've lain, 35 Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, 40 And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure 45 Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. 'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 50 Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head 55 When your soul is in my soul's stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, 60 They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, 65 He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; 70 They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white's their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. —I tell the tale that I heard told. 75 Mithridates, he died old.

"Nature's Questioning" Thomas Hardy

42. Nature's Questioning WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool, Field, flock, and lonely tree, All seem to look at me Like chastened children sitting silent in a school; Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn, 5 As though the master's ways Through the long teaching days Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne. And on them stirs, in lippings mere (As if once clear in call, 10 But now scarce breathed at all)— "We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here! "Has some Vast Imbecility, Mighty to build and blend, But impotent to tend, 15 Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry? "Or come we of an Automaton Unconscious of our pains?... Or are we live remains Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone? 20 "Or is it that some high Plan betides, As yet not understood, Of Evil stormed by Good, We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?" Thus things around. No answerer I.... 25 Meanwhile the winds, and rains, And Earth's old glooms and pains Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbors nigh.

"The Onset" Frost

ALWAYS the same, when on a fated night At last the gathered snow lets down as white As may be in dark woods, and with a song It shall not make again all winter long Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground, I almost stumble looking up and round, As one who overtaken by the end Gives up his errand, and lets death descend Upon him where he is, with nothing done To evil, no important triumph won, More than if life had never been begun. Yet all the precedent is on my side: I know that winter death has never tried The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap In long storms an undrifted four feet deep As measured against maple, birch and oak, It cannot check the peeper's silver croak; And I shall see the snow all go down hill In water of a slender April rill That flashes tail through last year's withered brake And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake. Nothing will be left white but here a birch, And there a clump of houses with a church

"Dead Before Death" Rossetti

Ah! changed and cold, how changed and very cold, With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes: Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise; This was the promise of the days of old! Grown hard and stubborn in the ancient mould, Grown rigid in the sham of lifelong lies: We hoped for better things as years would rise, But it is over as a tale once told. All fallen the blossom that no fruitage bore, All lost the present and the future time, All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before: So lost till death shut-to the opened door, So lost from chime to everlasting chime, So cold and lost for ever evermore.

"An Old Man's Winter Night" Frost

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.

"Hyla Brook" Frost

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.

"The Oxen" Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, "In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.

"Rain on a Grave" Thomas Hardy

Clouds spout upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, - Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly Such arrows of rain: One who to shelter Her delicate head Would quicken and quicken Each tentative tread If drops chanced to pelt her That summertime spills In dust-paven rills When thunder-clouds thicken And birds close their bills. Would that I lay there And she were housed here! Or better, together Were folded away there Exposed to one weather We both, - who would stray there When sunny the day there, Or evening was clear At the prime of the year. Soon will be growing Green blades from her mound, And daisies be showing Like stars on the ground, Till she form part of them - Ay - the sweet heart of them, Loved beyond measure With a child's pleasure All her life's round.

"Up-Hill" Rossetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn. Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door. Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

"Storm Fear" Frost

HEN the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lower 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.

"The Haunter" Thomas Hardy

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go? - Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do, But cannot answer the words he lifts me - Only listen thereto! When I could answer he did not say them: When I could let him know How I would like to join in his journeys Seldom he wished to go. Now that he goes and wants me with him More than he used to do, Never he sees my faithful phantom Though he speaks thereto. Yes, I companion him to places Only dreamers know, Where the shy hares print long paces, Where the night rooks go; Into old aisles where the past is all to him, Close as his shade can do, Always lacking the power to call to him, Near as I reach thereto! What a good haunter I am, O tell him, Quickly make him know If he but sigh since my loss befell him Straight to his side I go. Tell him a faithful one is doing All that love can do Still that his path may be worth pursuing, And to bring peace thereto.

"Home Burial" Frost

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it To raise herself and look again. He spoke Advancing toward her: 'What is it you see From up there always—for I want to know.' She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, And her face changed from terrified to dull. He said to gain time: 'What is it you see,' Mounting until she cowered under him. 'I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.' She, in her place, refused him any help With the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see. But at last he murmured, 'Oh,' and again, 'Oh.' 'What is it—what?' she said. 'Just that I see.' 'You don't,' she challenged. 'Tell me what it is.' 'The wonder is I didn't see at once. I never noticed it from here before. I must be wonted to it—that's the reason. The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it. Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it? There are three stones of slate and one of marble, Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those. But I understand: it is not the stones, But the child's mound—' 'Don't, don't, don't, don't,' she cried. She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs; And turned on him with such a daunting look, He said twice over before he knew himself: 'Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?' 'Not you! Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it! I must get out of here. I must get air. I don't know rightly whether any man can.' 'Amy! Don't go to someone else this time. Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs.' He sat and fixed his chin between his fists. 'There's something I should like to ask you, dear.' 'You don't know how to ask it.' 'Help me, then.' Her fingers moved the latch for all reply. 'My words are nearly always an offense. I don't know how to speak of anything So as to please you. But I might be taught I should suppose. I can't say I see how. A man must partly give up being a man With women-folk. We could have some arrangement By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off Anything special you're a-mind to name. Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love. Two that don't love can't live together without them. But two that do can't live together with them.' She moved the latch a little. 'Don't—don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much Unlike other folks as your standing there Apart would make me out. Give me my chance. I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think it the thing To take your mother-loss of a first child So inconsolably—in the face of love. You'd think his memory might be satisfied—' 'There you go sneering now!' 'I'm not, I'm not! You make me angry. I'll come down to you. God, what a woman! And it's come to this, A man can't speak of his own child that's dead.' 'You can't because you don't know how to speak. If you had any feelings, you that dug With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave; I saw you from that very window there, Making the gravel leap and leap in air, Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly And roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs To look again, and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.' 'I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed.' 'I can repeat the very words you were saying: "Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build." Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot To do with what was in the darkened parlor? You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretense of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand. But the world's evil. I won't have grief so If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!' 'There, you have said it all and you feel better. You won't go now. You're crying. Close the door. The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up. Amy! There's someone coming down the road!' 'You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go— Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—' 'If—you—do!' She was opening the door wider. 'Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—'

"Never Again Would Birds Song be the Same" Frost

He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words. Admittedly an eloquence so soft Could only have had an influence on birds When call or laughter carried it aloft. Be that as may be, she was in their song. Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed Had now persisted in the woods so long That probably it never would be lost. Never again would birds' song be the same. And to do that to birds was why she came.

"Your Last Drive" Thomas Hardy

Here by the moorway you returned, And saw the borough lights ahead That lit your face—all undiscerned To be in a week the face of the dead, And you told of the charm of that haloed view That never again would beam on you. And on your left you passed the spot Where eight days later you were to lie, And be spoken of as one who was not; Beholding it with a heedless eye As alien from you, though under its tree You soon would halt everlastingly. I drove not with you. . . . Yet had I sat At your side that eve I should not have seen That the countenance I was glancing at Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen, Nor have read the writing upon your face, "I go hence soon to my resting-place; "You may miss me then. But I shall not know How many times you visit me there, Or what your thoughts are, or if you go There never at all. And I shall not care. Should you censure me I shall take no heed And even your praises no more shall need." True: never you'll know. And you will not mind. But shall I then slight you because of such? Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find The thought "What profit", move me much? Yet abides the fact, indeed, the same,— You are past love, praise, indifference, blame

"The House of Hospitalities" Thomas Hardy

Here we broached the Christmas barrel, Pushed up the charred log-ends; Here we sang the Christmas carol, And called in friends. Time has tired me since we met here When the folk now dead were young, And the viands were outset here And quaint songs sung. And the worm has bored the viol That used to lead the tune, Rust eaten out the dial That struck night's noon. Now no Christmas brings in neighbours, And the New Year comes unlit; Where we sang the mole now labours, And spiders knit. Yet at midnight if here walking, When the moon sheets wall and tree, I see forms of old time talking, Who smile on me.

"The Subalterns" Thomas Hardy

I "Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky, "I fain would lighten thee, But there are laws in force on high Which say it must not be." II --"I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried The North, "knew I but how To warm my breath, to slack my stride; But I am ruled as thou." III --"To-morrow I attack thee, wight," Said Sickness. "Yet I swear I bear thy little ark no spite, But am bid enter there." IV --"Come hither, Son," I heard Death say; "I did not will a grave Should end thy pilgrimage to-day, But I, too, am a slave!" V We smiled upon each other then, And life to me had less Of that fell look it wore ere when They owned their passiveness.

"A Trampwoman's Tragedy" Thomas Hardy

I From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day, The livelong day, We beat afoot the northward way We had travelled times before. The sun-blaze burning on our backs, Our shoulders sticking to our packs, By fosseway1, fields, and turnpike tracks We skirted sad Sedge-Moor. II Full twenty miles we jaunted on, We jaunted on, — My fancy-man2, and jeering John, And Mother Lee, and I. And, as the sun drew down to west, We climbed the toilsome Polden crest, And saw, of landskip3 sights the best, The inn that beamed thereby. III Ay, side by side Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor4 wide, And where the Parret ran. We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge, Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge, Been stung by every Marshwood midge5, I and my fancy-man. IV Lone inns we loved, my man and I, My man and I; 'King's Stag', 'Windwhistle' high and dry, 'The Horse' on Hintock Green, The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap, 'The Hut', renowned on Bredy Knap, And many another wayside tap Where folk might sit unseen. V O deadly day, O deadly day! — I teased my fancy man in play And wanton idleness. I walked alongside jeering John, I laid his hand my waist upon; I would not bend my glances on My lover's dark distress. VI Thus Poldon top at last we won, At last we won, And gained the inn at sink of sun Far-famed as 'Marshal's Elm'. Beneath us figured tor and lea,6 From Mendip to the western sea — I doubt if any finer sight there be Within this royal realm. VII Inside the settle7 all a-row — All four a-row We sat, I next to John, to show That he had wooed and won. And then he took me on his knee, And swore it was his turn to be My favoured mate, and Mother Lee Passed to my former one. VIII Then in a voice I had never heard, I had never heard, My only love to me: 'One word, My lady, if you please! Whose is the child you are like8 to bear? — His? After all my months o' care?' Gods knows 'twas not! But, O despair! I nodded — still to tease. IX Then he sprung, and with his knife — And with his knife, He let out jeering Johnny's life, Yes; there at set of sun. The slant ray through the window nigh Gilded John's blood and glazing eye, Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I Knew that the deed was done. X The taverns tell the gloomy tale, The gloomy tale, How that at Ivel-Chester jail My love, my sweetheart swung; Though stained till now by no misdeed Save one horse ta'en in time of need; (Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed Ere his last fling he flung.) XI Thereaft I walked the world alone Alone, alone! On his death-day I gave my groan And dropt his dead-born child. 'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree, None tending me; for Mother Lee Had died at Glaston,9 leaving me Unfriended on the wild. XII And in the night as I lay weak, As I lay weak, The leaves a-falling on my cheek, The red moon low declined — The ghost of him I'd die to kiss Rose up and said: 'Ah, tell me this! Was the child mine, or was it his? Speak, that I my rest may find!' XIII O doubt but I told him then, I told him then, That I had kept me from all men Since we joined lips and swore. Whereat he smiled, and thinned away As the wind stirred to call up day . . . — 'Tis past! And here alone I stray Haunting the Western Moor.

"Wives in the Sere" Thomas Hardy

I Never a careworn wife but shows, If a joy suffuse her, Something beautiful to those Patient to peruse her, Some one charm the world unknows Precious to a muser, Haply what, ere years were foes, Moved her mate to choose her. II But, be it a hint of rose That an instant hues her, Or some early light or pose Wherewith thought renews her - Seen by him at full, ere woes Practised to abuse her - Sparely comes it, swiftly goes, Time again subdues her.

"Convergence of the Twain" Thomas Hardy

I In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. II Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. III Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. IV Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. V Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ... VI Well: while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything VII Prepared a sinister mate For her — so gaily great — A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. VIII And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. IX Alien they seemed to be; No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history, X Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, XI Till the Spinner of the Years Said "Now!" And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

"I Look into my Glass" Thomas Hardy

I LOOK into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And say, "Would God it came to pass My heart had shrunk as thin!" For then, I, undistrest 5 By hearts grown cold to me, Could lonely wait my endless rest With equanimity. But Time, to make me grieve, Part steals, lets part abide; 10 And shakes this fragile frame at eve With throbbings of noontide.

"The Dream is Which?" Thomas Hardy

I am laughing by the brook with her, Splashed in its tumbling stir; And then it is a blankness looms As if I walked not there, Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms, And treading a lonely stair. With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes We sit where none espies; Till a harsh change comes edging in As no such scene were there, But winter, and I were bent and thin, And cinder-gray my hair. We dance in heys around the hall, Weightless as thistleball; And then a curtain drops between, As if I danced not there, But wandered through a mounded green To find her, I knew where.

"Heredity" Thomas Hardy

I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, And leaping from place to place Over oblivion. The years-heired feature that can In curve and voice and eye Despise the human span Of durance -- that is I; The eternal thing in man, That heeds no call to die

"Design" Robert Frost

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, 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? 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.

"Acquainted with the Night" Frost

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 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-bye; 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.

"The Darkling Thrush" Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

"No, Thank You, John" Rossetti

I never said I loved you, John: Why will you tease me day by day, And wax a weariness to think upon With always "do" and "pray"? You Know I never loved you, John; No fault of mine made me your toast: Why will you haunt me with a face as wan As shows an hour-old ghost? I dare say Meg or Moll would take Pity upon you, if you'd ask: And pray don't remain single for my sake Who can't perform the task. I have no heart?-Perhaps I have not; But then you're mad to take offence That don't give you what I have not got: Use your common sense. Let bygones be bygones: Don't call me false, who owed not to be true: I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns Than answer "Yes" to you. Let's mar our plesant days no more, Song-birds of passage, days of youth: Catch at today, forget the days before: I'll wink at your untruth. Let us strike hands as hearty friends; No more, no less; and friendship's good: Only don't keep in veiw ulterior ends, And points not understood In open treaty. Rise above Quibbles and shuffling off and on: Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,- No, thank you, John.

"An Apple Gathering" Rossetti

I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree And wore them all that evening in my hair: Then in due season when I went to see I found no apples there. With dangling basket all along the grass As I had come I went the selfsame track: My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass So empty-handed back. Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by, Their heaped-up basket teased me like a jeer; Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky, Their mother's home was near. Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full, A stronger hand than hers helped it along; A voice talked with her through the shadows cool More sweet to me than song. Ah Willie, Willie, was my love less worth Than apples with their green leaves piled above? I counted rosiest apples on the earth Of far less worth than love. So once it was with me you stooped to talk Laughing and listening in this very lane: To think that by this way we used to walk We shall not walk again! I let me neighbours pass me, ones and twos And groups; the latest said the night grew chill, And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews Fell fast I loitered still.

"Winter: My Secret"

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I; Perhaps some day, who knows? But not today; it froze, and blows and snows, And you're too curious: fie! You want to hear it? well: Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell. Or, after all, perhaps there's none: Suppose there is no secret after all, But only just my fun. Today's a nipping day, a biting day; In which one wants a shawl, A veil, a cloak, and other wraps: I cannot ope to everyone who taps, And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall; Come bounding and surrounding me, Come buffeting, astounding me, Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all. I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows His nose to Russian snows To be pecked at by every wind that blows? You would not peck? I thank you for good will, Believe, but leave the truth untested still. Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust March with its peck of dust, Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers, Nor even May, whose flowers One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours. Perhaps some languid summer day, When drowsy birds sing less and less, And golden fruit is ripening to excess, If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud, And the warm wind is neither still nor loud, Perhaps my secret I may say, Or you may guess.

"The Tuft of Flowers" Frost

I went to turn the grass once after one Who mowed it in the dew before the sun. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen Before I came to view the levelled scene. I looked for him behind an isle of trees; I listened for his whetstone on the breeze. But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been,—alone, 'As all must be,' I said within my heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.' But as I said it, swift there passed me by On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly, Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night Some resting flower of yesterday's delight. And once I marked his flight go round and round, As where some flower lay withering on the ground. And then he flew as far as eye could see, And then on tremulous wing came back to me. I thought of questions that have no reply, And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; But he turned first, and led my eye to look At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. I left my place to know them by their name, Finding them butterfly weed when I came. The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us, Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. But from sheer morning gladness at the brim. The butterfly and I had lit upon, Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, That made me hear the wakening birds around, And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground, And feel a spirit kindred to my own; So that henceforth I worked no more alone; But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, And weary, sought at noon with him the shade; And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach. 'Men work together,' I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.'

"The Pasture" Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf That's standing by the mother. It's so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

"Hap" Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!" Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

"The Mongrel" Thomas Hardy

In Havenpool Harbour the ebb was strong, And a man with a dog drew near and hung, And taxpaying day was coming along, So the mongrel had to be drowned. The man threw a stick from the paved wharf-side Into the midst of the ebbing tide, And the dog jumped after with ardent pride To bring the stick aground. But no: the steady suck of the flood To seaward needed, to be withstood, More than the strength of mongrelhood To fight its trecherous trend. So, swimming for life with desperate will, The struggler with all his natant skill Kept bouyant in front of his master, still There standing to wait the end. The loving eyes of the dog inclined To the man he held as a god enshrined, With no suspicion in his mind That this had all been meant. Till the effort not to drift from shore Of his little legs grew slower and slower, And the tide still outing with brookless power Outward the dog, too, went. Just ere his sinking what does one see Break on the face of that devotee? A wakening to the treachery He had loved with love so blind? The faith that had shone in that mongrel's eye That his owner would save him by and by Turned to much like a curse as he sank to die, And a loathing of mankind.

"Into my Heart an Air that Kills" AE Housman

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

"Cobwebs" Rossetti

It is a land with neither night nor day, Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain, Nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain Stretches thro' long unbroken miles away: While thro' the sluggish air a twilight grey Broodeth; no moons or seasons wax and wane, No ebb and flow are there among the main, No bud-time no leaf-falling there for aye, No ripple on the sea, no shifting sand, No beat of wings to stir the stagnant space, And loveless sea: no trace of days before, No guarded home, no time-worn restingplace No future hope no fear forevermore.

"Without Ceremony" Thomas Hardy

It was your way, my dear, To be gone without a word When callers, friends, or kin Had left, and I hastened in To rejoin you, as I inferred. And when you'd a mind to career Off anywhere - say to town - You were all on a sudden gone Before I had thought thereon, Or noticed your trunks were down. So, now that you disappear For ever in that swift style, Your meaning seems to me Just as it used to be: 'Good-bye is not worth while!'

"Loveliest of Trees" AE Housman

LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

"Astrophel and Stella 1" Sir Phillip Sidney

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain; I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain: Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun‐burn'd brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay, Invention, Nature's child, fled step‐dame Study's blows, And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way. Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite‐‐ "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

"Death of the Hired Man" Frost

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 passage 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. "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 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." "Sh! not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said. "I want him to: he'll have to soon or late." "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. 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." "Warren!" "But did he? I just want to know." "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. 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." "Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream. You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger! Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him. After so many years he still keeps finding Good arguments he sees he might have used. I sympathise. I know just how it feels To think of the right thing to say too late. Harold's associated in his mind with Latin. He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying He studied Latin like the violin Because he liked it—that an argument! He said he couldn't make the boy believe He could find water with a hazel prong— Which showed how much good school had ever done him. 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——" "I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment. He bundles every forkful in its place, And tags and numbers it for future reference, So he can find and easily dislodge it In the unloading. Silas does that well. He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests. You never see him standing on the hay He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself." "He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be Some good perhaps to someone in the world. He hates to see a boy the fool of books. Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk, And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope, So now and never any different." Part of a moon was falling down the west, Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills. Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, As if she played unheard the tenderness That wrought on him beside her in the night. "Warren," she said, "he has come home to die: You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time." "Home," he mocked gently. "Yes, what else but home? It all depends on what you mean by home. Of course he's nothing to us, any more Than was the hound that came a stranger to us Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail." "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." "I should have called it Something you somehow haven't to deserve." Warren leaned out and took a step or two, Picked up a little stick, and brought it back And broke it in his hand and tossed it by. "Silas has better claim on us you think Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles As the road winds would bring him to his door. Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day. Why didn't he go there? His brother's rich, A somebody—director in the bank." "He never told us that." "We know it though." "I think his brother ought to help, of course. I'll see to that if there is need. He ought of right To take him in, and might be willing to— He may be better than appearances. But have some pity on Silas. Do you think If he'd had any pride in claiming kin Or anything he looked for from his brother, He'd keep so still about him all this time?" "I wonder what's between them." "I can tell you. Silas is what he is—we wouldn't mind him— But just the kind that kinsfolk can't abide. He never did a thing so very bad. He don't know why he isn't quite as good As anyone. He won't be made ashamed To please his brother, worthless though he is." "I can't think Si ever hurt anyone." "No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back. He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge. You must go in and see what you can do. I made the bed up for him there to-night. You'll be surprised at him—how much he's broken. His working days are done; I'm sure of it." "I'd not be in a hurry to say that." "I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself. But, Warren, please remember how it is: He's come to help you ditch the meadow. He has a plan. You mustn't laugh at him. He may not speak of it, and then he may. I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud Will hit or miss the moon." It hit the moon. Then there were three there, making a dim row, The moon, the little silver cloud, and she. Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her, Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited. "Warren," she questioned. "Dead," was all he answered.

"Goblin Market" Rossetti

Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpeck'd cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;— All ripe together In summer weather,— Morns that pass by, Fair eves that fly; Come buy, come buy: Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine, Dates and sharp bullaces, Rare pears and greengages, Damsons and bilberries, Taste them and try: Currants and gooseberries, Bright-fire-like barberries, Figs to fill your mouth, Citrons from the South, Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Come buy, come buy." Evening by evening Among the brookside rushes, Laura bow'd her head to hear, Lizzie veil'd her blushes: Crouching close together In the cooling weather, With clasping arms and cautioning lips, With tingling cheeks and finger tips. "Lie close," Laura said, Pricking up her golden head: "We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?" "Come buy," call the goblins Hobbling down the glen. "Oh," cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura, You should not peep at goblin men." Lizzie cover'd up her eyes, Cover'd close lest they should look; Laura rear'd her glossy head, And whisper'd like the restless brook: "Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie, Down the glen tramp little men. One hauls a basket, One bears a plate, One lugs a golden dish Of many pounds weight. How fair the vine must grow Whose grapes are so luscious; How warm the wind must blow Through those fruit bushes." "No," said Lizzie, "No, no, no; Their offers should not charm us, Their evil gifts would harm us." She thrust a dimpled finger In each ear, shut eyes and ran: Curious Laura chose to linger Wondering at each merchant man. One had a cat's face, One whisk'd a tail, One tramp'd at a rat's pace, One crawl'd like a snail, One like a wombat prowl'd obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry. She heard a voice like voice of doves Cooing all together: They sounded kind and full of loves In the pleasant weather. Laura stretch'd her gleaming neck Like a rush-imbedded swan, Like a lily from the beck, Like a moonlit poplar branch, Like a vessel at the launch When its last restraint is gone. Backwards up the mossy glen Turn'd and troop'd the goblin men, With their shrill repeated cry, "Come buy, come buy." When they reach'd where Laura was They stood stock still upon the moss, Leering at each other, Brother with queer brother; Signalling each other, Brother with sly brother. One set his basket down, One rear'd his plate; One began to weave a crown Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown (Men sell not such in any town); One heav'd the golden weight Of dish and fruit to offer her: "Come buy, come buy," was still their cry. Laura stared but did not stir, Long'd but had no money: The whisk-tail'd merchant bade her taste In tones as smooth as honey, The cat-faced purr'd, The rat-faced spoke a word Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard; One parrot-voiced and jolly Cried "Pretty Goblin" still for "Pretty Polly;"— One whistled like a bird. But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste: "Good folk, I have no coin; To take were to purloin: I have no copper in my purse, I have no silver either, And all my gold is on the furze That shakes in windy weather Above the rusty heather." "You have much gold upon your head," They answer'd all together: "Buy from us with a golden curl." She clipp'd a precious golden lock, She dropp'd a tear more rare than pearl, Then suck'd their fruit globes fair or red: Sweeter than honey from the rock, Stronger than man-rejoicing wine, Clearer than water flow'd that juice; She never tasted such before, How should it cloy with length of use? She suck'd and suck'd and suck'd the more Fruits which that unknown orchard bore; She suck'd until her lips were sore; Then flung the emptied rinds away But gather'd up one kernel stone, And knew not was it night or day As she turn'd home alone. Lizzie met her at the gate Full of wise upbraidings: "Dear, you should not stay so late, Twilight is not good for maidens; Should not loiter in the glen In the haunts of goblin men. Do you not remember Jeanie, How she met them in the moonlight, Took their gifts both choice and many, Ate their fruits and wore their flowers Pluck'd from bowers Where summer ripens at all hours? But ever in the noonlight She pined and pined away; Sought them by night and day, Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey; Then fell with the first snow, While to this day no grass will grow Where she lies low: I planted daisies there a year ago That never blow. You should not loiter so." "Nay, hush," said Laura: "Nay, hush, my sister: I ate and ate my fill, Yet my mouth waters still; To-morrow night I will Buy more;" and kiss'd her: "Have done with sorrow; I'll bring you plums to-morrow Fresh on their mother twigs, Cherries worth getting; You cannot think what figs My teeth have met in, What melons icy-cold Piled on a dish of gold Too huge for me to hold, What peaches with a velvet nap, Pellucid grapes without one seed: Odorous indeed must be the mead Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink With lilies at the brink, And sugar-sweet their sap." Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other's wings, They lay down in their curtain'd bed: Like two blossoms on one stem, Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow, Like two wands of ivory Tipp'd with gold for awful kings. Moon and stars gaz'd in at them, Wind sang to them lullaby, Lumbering owls forbore to fly, Not a bat flapp'd to and fro Round their rest: Cheek to cheek and breast to breast Lock'd together in one nest. Early in the morning When the first cock crow'd his warning, Neat like bees, as sweet and busy, Laura rose with Lizzie: Fetch'd in honey, milk'd the cows, Air'd and set to rights the house, Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat, Cakes for dainty mouths to eat, Next churn'd butter, whipp'd up cream, Fed their poultry, sat and sew'd; Talk'd as modest maidens should: Lizzie with an open heart, Laura in an absent dream, One content, one sick in part; One warbling for the mere bright day's delight, One longing for the night. At length slow evening came: They went with pitchers to the reedy brook; Lizzie most placid in her look, Laura most like a leaping flame. They drew the gurgling water from its deep; Lizzie pluck'd purple and rich golden flags, Then turning homeward said: "The sunset flushes Those furthest loftiest crags; Come, Laura, not another maiden lags. No wilful squirrel wags, The beasts and birds are fast asleep." But Laura loiter'd still among the rushes And said the bank was steep. And said the hour was early still The dew not fall'n, the wind not chill; Listening ever, but not catching The customary cry, "Come buy, come buy," With its iterated jingle Of sugar-baited words: Not for all her watching Once discerning even one goblin Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling; Let alone the herds That used to tramp along the glen, In groups or single, Of brisk fruit-merchant men. Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come; I hear the fruit-call but I dare not look: You should not loiter longer at this brook: Come with me home. The stars rise, the moon bends her arc, Each glowworm winks her spark, Let us get home before the night grows dark: For clouds may gather Though this is summer weather, Put out the lights and drench us through; Then if we lost our way what should we do?" Laura turn'd cold as stone To find her sister heard that cry alone, That goblin cry, "Come buy our fruits, come buy." Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit? Must she no more such succous pasture find, Gone deaf and blind? Her tree of life droop'd from the root: She said not one word in her heart's sore ache; But peering thro' the dimness, nought discerning, Trudg'd home, her pitcher dripping all the way; So crept to bed, and lay Silent till Lizzie slept; Then sat up in a passionate yearning, And gnash'd her teeth for baulk'd desire, and wept As if her heart would break. Day after day, night after night, Laura kept watch in vain In sullen silence of exceeding pain. She never caught again the goblin cry: "Come buy, come buy;"— She never spied the goblin men Hawking their fruits along the glen: But when the noon wax'd bright Her hair grew thin and grey; She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn To swift decay and burn Her fire away. One day remembering her kernel-stone She set it by a wall that faced the south; Dew'd it with tears, hoped for a root, Watch'd for a waxing shoot, But there came none; It never saw the sun, It never felt the trickling moisture run: While with sunk eyes and faded mouth She dream'd of melons, as a traveller sees False waves in desert drouth With shade of leaf-crown'd trees, And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze. She no more swept the house, Tended the fowls or cows, Fetch'd honey, kneaded cakes of wheat, Brought water from the brook: But sat down listless in the chimney-nook And would not eat. Tender Lizzie could not bear To watch her sister's cankerous care Yet not to share. She night and morning Caught the goblins' cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy;"— Beside the brook, along the glen, She heard the tramp of goblin men, The yoke and stir Poor Laura could not hear; Long'd to buy fruit to comfort her, But fear'd to pay too dear. She thought of Jeanie in her grave, Who should have been a bride; But who for joys brides hope to have Fell sick and died In her gay prime, In earliest winter time With the first glazing rime, With the first snow-fall of crisp winter time. Till Laura dwindling Seem'd knocking at Death's door: Then Lizzie weigh'd no more Better and worse; But put a silver penny in her purse, Kiss'd Laura, cross'd the heath with clumps of furze At twilight, halted by the brook: And for the first time in her life Began to listen and look. Laugh'd every goblin When they spied her peeping: Came towards her hobbling, Flying, running, leaping, Puffing and blowing, Chuckling, clapping, crowing, Clucking and gobbling, Mopping and mowing, Full of airs and graces, Pulling wry faces, Demure grimaces, Cat-like and rat-like, Ratel- and wombat-like, Snail-paced in a hurry, Parrot-voiced and whistler, Helter skelter, hurry skurry, Chattering like magpies, Fluttering like pigeons, Gliding like fishes,— Hugg'd her and kiss'd her: Squeez'd and caress'd her: Stretch'd up their dishes, Panniers, and plates: "Look at our apples Russet and dun, Bob at our cherries, Bite at our peaches, Citrons and dates, Grapes for the asking, Pears red with basking Out in the sun, Plums on their twigs; Pluck them and suck them, Pomegranates, figs."— "Good folk," said Lizzie, Mindful of Jeanie: "Give me much and many: — Held out her apron, Toss'd them her penny. "Nay, take a seat with us, Honour and eat with us," They answer'd grinning: "Our feast is but beginning. Night yet is early, Warm and dew-pearly, Wakeful and starry: Such fruits as these No man can carry: Half their bloom would fly, Half their dew would dry, Half their flavour would pass by. Sit down and feast with us, Be welcome guest with us, Cheer you and rest with us."— "Thank you," said Lizzie: "But one waits At home alone for me: So without further parleying, If you will not sell me any Of your fruits though much and many, Give me back my silver penny I toss'd you for a fee."— They began to scratch their pates, No longer wagging, purring, But visibly demurring, Grunting and snarling. One call'd her proud, Cross-grain'd, uncivil; Their tones wax'd loud, Their looks were evil. Lashing their tails They trod and hustled her, Elbow'd and jostled her, Claw'd with their nails, Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, Tore her gown and soil'd her stocking, Twitch'd her hair out by the roots, Stamp'd upon her tender feet, Held her hands and squeez'd their fruits Against her mouth to make her eat. White and golden Lizzie stood, Like a lily in a flood,— Like a rock of blue-vein'd stone Lash'd by tides obstreperously,— Like a beacon left alone In a hoary roaring sea, Sending up a golden fire,— Like a fruit-crown'd orange-tree White with blossoms honey-sweet Sore beset by wasp and bee,— Like a royal virgin town Topp'd with gilded dome and spire Close beleaguer'd by a fleet Mad to tug her standard down. One may lead a horse to water, Twenty cannot make him drink. Though the goblins cuff'd and caught her, Coax'd and fought her, Bullied and besought her, Scratch'd her, pinch'd her black as ink, Kick'd and knock'd her, Maul'd and mock'd her, Lizzie utter'd not a word; Would not open lip from lip Lest they should cram a mouthful in: But laugh'd in heart to feel the drip Of juice that syrupp'd all her face, And lodg'd in dimples of her chin, And streak'd her neck which quaked like curd. At last the evil people, Worn out by her resistance, Flung back her penny, kick'd their fruit Along whichever road they took, Not leaving root or stone or shoot; Some writh'd into the ground, Some div'd into the brook With ring and ripple, Some scudded on the gale without a sound, Some vanish'd in the distance. In a smart, ache, tingle, Lizzie went her way; Knew not was it night or day; Sprang up the bank, tore thro' the furze, Threaded copse and dingle, And heard her penny jingle Bouncing in her purse,— Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran As if she fear'd some goblin man Dogg'd her with gibe or curse Or something worse: But not one goblin scurried after, Nor was she prick'd by fear; The kind heart made her windy-paced That urged her home quite out of breath with haste And inward laughter. She cried, "Laura," up the garden, "Did you miss me? Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises, Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeez'd from goblin fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin dew. Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura, make much of me; For your sake I have braved the glen And had to do with goblin merchant men." Laura started from her chair, Flung her arms up in the air, Clutch'd her hair: "Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted For my sake the fruit forbidden? Must your light like mine be hidden, Your young life like mine be wasted, Undone in mine undoing, And ruin'd in my ruin, Thirsty, canker'd, goblin-ridden?"— She clung about her sister, Kiss'd and kiss'd and kiss'd her: Tears once again Refresh'd her shrunken eyes, Dropping like rain After long sultry drouth; Shaking with aguish fear, and pain, She kiss'd and kiss'd her with a hungry mouth. Her lips began to scorch, That juice was wormwood to her tongue, She loath'd the feast: Writhing as one possess'd she leap'd and sung, Rent all her robe, and wrung Her hands in lamentable haste, And beat her breast. Her locks stream'd like the torch Borne by a racer at full speed, Or like the mane of horses in their flight, Or like an eagle when she stems the light Straight toward the sun, Or like a caged thing freed, Or like a flying flag when armies run. Swift fire spread through her veins, knock'd at her heart, Met the fire smouldering there And overbore its lesser flame; She gorged on bitterness without a name: Ah! fool, to choose such part Of soul-consuming care! Sense fail'd in the mortal strife: Like the watch-tower of a town Which an earthquake shatters down, Like a lightning-stricken mast, Like a wind-uprooted tree Spun about, Like a foam-topp'd waterspout Cast down headlong in the sea, She fell at last; Pleasure past and anguish past, Is it death or is it life? Life out of death. That night long Lizzie watch'd by her, Counted her pulse's flagging stir, Felt for her breath, Held water to her lips, and cool'd her face With tears and fanning leaves: But when the first birds chirp'd about their eaves, And early reapers plodded to the place Of golden sheaves, And dew-wet grass Bow'd in the morning winds so brisk to pass, And new buds with new day Open'd of cup-like lilies on the stream, Laura awoke as from a dream, Laugh'd in the innocent old way, Hugg'd Lizzie but not twice or thrice; Her gleaming locks show'd not one thread of grey, Her breath was sweet as May And light danced in her eyes. Days, weeks, months, years Afterwards, when both were wives With children of their own; Their mother-hearts beset with fears, Their lives bound up in tender lives; Laura would call the little ones And tell them of her early prime, Those pleasant days long gone Of not-returning time: Would talk about the haunted glen, The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men, Their fruits like honey to the throat But poison in the blood; (Men sell not such in any town): Would tell them how her sister stood In deadly peril to do her good, And win the fiery antidote: Then joining hands to little hands Would bid them cling together, "For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands."

"My November Guest" Frost

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 walked the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay. She talks and I am fain to list: 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.

"A Birthday" Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

"After Apple-Picking" Frost

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 glass 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, 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. 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.

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" Frost

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.

"Into my Own" Frost

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 5 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 10 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.

"The Runaway" Frost

Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, We stopped by a mountain pasture to say 'Whose colt?' A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey, Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes. 'I think the little fellow's afraid of the snow. He isn't winter-broken. It isn't play With the little fellow at all. He's running away. I doubt if even his mother could tell him, "Sakes, It's only weather". He'd think she didn't know ! Where is his mother? He can't be out alone.' And now he comes again with a clatter of stone And mounts the wall again with whited eyes And all his tail that isn't hair up straight. He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies. 'Whoever it is that leaves him out so late, When other creatures have gone to stall and bin, Ought to be told to come and take him in.'

"In an Artist's Studio" Rossetti

One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens, A saint, an angel — every canvas means The same one meaning, neither more or less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

"Lament" Thomas Hardy

Or she would have reigned At a dinner tonight With ardours unfeigned, And a generous delight; All in her abode She'd have freely bestowed On her guests.... But alas, She is shut under grass Where no cups flow, Powerless to know That it might be so. And she would have sought With a child's eager glance The shy snowdrops brought By the new year's advance, And peered in the rime Of Candlemas-time For crocuses... chanced It that she were not tranced From sights she loved best; Wholly possessed By an infinite rest! And we are here staying Amid these stale things Who care not for gaying, And those junketings That wed so to joy her, And never to cloy her As us they cloy!... But She is shut, she is shut From the cheer of them, dead To all done and said In a yew-arched bed.

"Two Tramp's in Mud Time" Frost

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 had dropped behind 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. Good blocks of oak it was I split, As large around as the chopping block; 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 my soul, 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. 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 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. 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, 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. The time when most I loved my task The 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, The grip of earth on outspread feet, The life of muscles rocking soft And smooth and moist in vernal heat. Out of the wood two hulking tramps (From sleeping God knows where last night, 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 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 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, 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, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes.

"Reluctance" Frost

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?

"The Wood Pile" Frost

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day, I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.' The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of tall slim trees Too much alike to mark or name a place by So as to say for certain I was here Or somewhere else: I was just far from home. A small bird flew before me. He was careful To put a tree between us when he lighted, And say no word to tell me who he was Who was so foolish as to think what he thought. He thought that I was after him for a feather— The white one in his tail; like one who takes Everything said as personal to himself. One flight out sideways would have undeceived him. And then there was a pile of wood for which I forgot him and let his little fear Carry him off the way I might have gone, Without so much as wishing him good-night. He went behind it to make his last stand. It was a cord of maple, cut and split And piled—and measured, four by four by eight. And not another like it could I see. No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it. And it was older sure than this year's cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before. The wood was gray and the bark warping off it And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree Still growing, and on one a stake and prop, These latter about to fall. I thought that only Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks Could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself, the labor of his ax, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

"Transformations" Thomas Hardy

Portion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot: This branch may be his wife, A ruddy human life Now turned to a green shoot. These grasses must be made Of her who often prayed, Last century, for repose; And the fair girl long ago Whom I often tried to know May be entering this rose. So, they are not underground, But as nerves and veins abound In the growths of upper air, And they feel the sun and rain, And the energy again That made them what they were

"The Workbox" Thomas Hardy

See, here's the workbox, little wife, That I made of polished oak.' He was a joiner, of village life; She came of borough folk. He holds the present up to her As with a smile she nears And answers to the profferer, ''Twill last all my sewing years!' 'I warrant it will. And longer too. 'Tis a scantling that I got Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who Died of they knew not what. 'The shingled pattern that seems to cease Against your box's rim Continues right on in the piece That's underground with him. 'And while I worked it made me think Of timber's varied doom; One inch where people eat and drink, The next inch in a tomb. 'But why do you look so white, my dear, And turn aside your face? You knew not that good lad, I fear, Though he came from your native place?' 'How could I know that good young man, Though he came from my native town, When he must have left there earlier than I was a woman grown?' 'Ah, no. I should have understood! It shocked you that I gave To you one end of a piece of wood Whose other is in a grave?' 'Don't, dear, despise my intellect, Mere accidental things Of that sort never have effect On my imaginings.' Yet still her lips were limp and wan, Her face still held aside, As if she had known not only John, But known of what he died.

"The Silken Tent" Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease, And its supporting central cedar pole, That is its pinnacle to heavenward And signifies the sureness of the soul, Seems to owe naught to any single cord, But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To every thing on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightlest bondage made aware.

"The One We Knew" Thomas Hardy

She told how they used to form for the country dances - "The Triumph," "The New-rigged Ship" - To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses, And in cots to the blink of a dip. She spoke of the wild "poussetting" and "allemanding" On carpet, on oak, and on sod; And the two long rows of ladies and gentlemen standing, And the figures the couples trod. She showed us the spot where the maypole was yearly planted, And where the bandsmen stood While breeched and kerchiefed partners whirled, and panted To choose each other for good. She told of that far-back day when they learnt astounded Of the death of the King of France: Of the Terror; and then of Bonaparte's unbounded Ambition and arrogance. Of how his threats woke warlike preparations Along the southern strand, And how each night brought tremors and trepidations Lest morning should see him land. She said she had often heard the gibbet creaking As it swayed in the lightning flash, Had caught from the neighbouring town a small child's shrieking At the cart-tail under the lash . . . With cap-framed face and long gaze into the embers - We seated around her knees - She would dwell on such dead themes, not as one who remembers, But rather as one who sees. She seemed one left behind of a band gone distant So far that no tongue could hail: Past things retold were to her as things existent, Things present but as a tale.

"A Church Romance" Thomas Hardy

She turned in the high pew, until her sight Swept the west gallery, and caught its row Of music-men with viol, book, and bow Against the sinking sad tower-window light. She turned again; and in her pride's despite One strenuous viol's inspirer seemed to throw A message from his string to her below, Which said: "I claim thee as my own forthright!" Thus their hearts' bond began, in due time signed. And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance, At some old attitude of his or glance That gallery-scene would break upon her mind, With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim, Bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount Ephraim."

"Mending Wall" Frost

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 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 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 out-door 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 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."

"Great Things" Thomas Hardy

Sweet cyder is a great thing, A great thing to me, Spinning down to Weymouth town By Ridgway thirstily, And maid and mistress summoning Who tend the hostelry: O cyder is a great thing, A great thing to me! The dance it is a great thing, A great thing to me, With candles lit and partners fit For night-long revelry; And going home when day-dawning Peeps pale upon the lea: O dancing is a great thing, A great thing to me! Love is, yea, a great thing, A great thing to me, When, having drawn across the lawn In darkness silently, A figure flits like one a-wing Out from the nearest tree: O love is, yes, a great thing, A great thing to me! Will these be always great things, Great things to me? . . . Let it befall that One will call, "Soul, I have need of thee": What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings, Love, and its ecstasy, Will always have been great things, Great things to me!

"The Impercipient" Thomas Hardy

THAT from this bright believing band An outcast I should be, That faiths by which my comrades stand Seem fantasies to me, And mirage-mists their Shining Land, Is a drear destiny. Why thus my soul should be consigned To infelicity, Why always I must feel as blind To sights my brethren see, Why joys they've found I cannot find, Abides a mystery. Since heart of mine knows not that ease Which they know; since it be That He who breathes All's Well to these Breathes no All's Well to me, My lack might move their sympathies And Christian charity! I am like a gazer who should mark An inland company Standing upfingered, with, "Hark! hark! The glorious distant sea!" And feel, "Alas, 'tis but yon dark And wind-swept pine to me!" Yet I would bear my shortcomings With meet tranquillity, But for the charge that blessed things I'd liefer have unbe. O, doth a bird deprived of wings Go earth-bound wilfully! . . . . Enough. As yet disquiet clings About us. Rest shall we.

"In Neglect" Frost

THEY leave us so to the way we took, As two in whom they were proved mistaken, That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook, With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look, And try if we cannot feel forsaken. 5

"Channeling Fire" Thomas Hardy

That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgment-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the mounds, The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No; It's gunnery practice out at sea Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be: "All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you who are helpless in such matters. "That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them's a blessed thing, For if it were they'd have to scour Hell's floor for so much threatening.... "Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need)." So down we lay again. "I wonder, Will the world ever saner be," Said one, "than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!" And many a skeleton shook his head. "Instead of preaching forty year," My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, "I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

"Range-Finding" Frost

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 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 mullein stalks a wheel of thread 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.

"After Death" Rossetti

The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept. He leaned above me, thinking that I slept And could not hear him; but I heard him say, 'Poor child, poor child': and as he turned away Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept. He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold That hid my face, or take my hand in his, Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head: He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is To know he still is warm though I am cold.

"The night is Freezing Fast" AE Housman

The night is freezing fast, To-morrow comes December; And winterfalls of old Are with me from the past; And chiefly I remember How Dick would hate the cold. Fall, winter, fall; for he, Prompt hand and headpiece clever, Has woven a winter robe, And made of earth and sea His overcoat for ever, And wears the turning globe.

"The Span of Life" Frost

The old dog barks backwards without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.

"Once by the Pacific" Frost

The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore 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 shore 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 God's last Put out the light was spoken.

"Proud Songsters" Thomas Hardy

The thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales In bushes Pipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs. These are brand new birds of twelvemonths' growing, Which a year ago, or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales, Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.

"To an Athlete Dying Young" AE Housman

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's.

"Dust of Snow" Frost

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.

"The Oven Bird" Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing

"Mowing" Frost

There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

"Spring Pools" Frost

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.

"Drummer Hodge" Thomas Hardy

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined -- just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around: And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the drummer never knew -- Fresh from his Wessex home -- The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.

"A Triad" Rossetti

Three sang of love together: one with lips Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow, Flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips; And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show; And one was blue with famine after love, Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low The burden of what those were singing of. One shamed herself in love; one temperately Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife; One famished died for love. Thus two of three Took death for love and won him after strife; One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee: All on the threshold, yet all short of life.

"The Last Chrysanthemum" Thomas Hardy

Through the slow summer, when the sun Called to each frond and whorl That all he could for flowers was being done, Why did it not uncurl? It must have felt that fervid call Although it took no heed, Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, And saps all retrocede. Too late its beauty, lonely thing, The season's shine is spent, Nothing remains for it but shivering In tempests turbulent. Had it a reason for delay, Dreaming in witlessness That for a bloom so delicately gay Winter would stay its stress? - I talk as if the thing were born With sense to work its mind; Yet it is but one mask of many worn By the Great Face behind.

"The Road Not Taken" Frost

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 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

"The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" Robert Browning

VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews—sons mine ... ah God, I know not! Well— She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! 5 What's done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. Life, how and what is it? As here I lie 10 In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought 15 With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the very dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, 25 And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! 35 My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I! ... Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40 And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, 45 That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! 50 Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black— 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? 55 The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me. Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60 Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables ... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp 65 Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then! 'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve. My bath must needs be left behind, alas! 70 One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? 75 —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80 And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, 85 Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's work: 90 And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, 95 Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, —Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! 100 Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, 105 Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110 To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— 115 Gritstone, a crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120 —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, the church for peace, That I may watch at leisure if he leers— Old Gandolf—at me, from his onion-stone, As still he envied me, so fair she was!

"Song" Rossetti

WHEN I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain; And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

"With Rue my Heart is Laden" AE Housman

WITH rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping 5 The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.

"Neutral Tones" Thomas Hardy

We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; - They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles of years ago; And some words played between us to and fro On which lost the more by our love. The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing.... Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

"Birches" Frost

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 As ice-storms do. 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 shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass 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 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 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 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.

"Afterwards" Thomas Hardy

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, 'He was a man who used to notice such things'? If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think, 'To him this must have been a familiar sight.' If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, One may say, 'He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.' If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more, 'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'? And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom, 'He hears it not now, but used to notice such things'?

"Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" Frost

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 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.

"Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" Robert Frost

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 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

"The Going" Thomas Hardy

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow's dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! Never to bid good-bye Or lip me the softest call, Or utter a wish for a word, while I Saw morning harden upon the wall, Unmoved, unknowing That your great going Had place that moment, and altered all. Why do you make me leave the house And think for a breath it is you I see At the end of the alley of bending boughs Where so often at dusk you used to be; Till in darkening dankness The yawning blankness Of the perspective sickens me! You were she who abode By those red-veined rocks far West, You were the swan-necked one who rode Along the beetling Beeny Crest, And, reining nigh me, Would muse and eye me, While Life unrolled us its very best. Why, then, latterly did we not speak, Did we not think of those days long dead, And ere your vanishing strive to seek That time's renewal? We might have said, "In this bright spring weather We'll visit together Those places that once we visited." Well, well! All's past amend, Unchangeable. It must go. I seem but a dead man held on end To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know That such swift fleeing No soul foreseeing— Not even I—would undo me so!

"Rose-Ann" Thomas Hardy

Why didn't you say you was promised, Rose-Ann? Why didn't you name it to me, Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann, So often, so wearifully? O why did you let me be near 'ee, Rose-Ann, Talking things about wedlock so free, And never by nod or by whisper, Rose-Ann, Give a hint that it wasn't to be? Down home I was raising a flock of stock ewes, Cocks and hens, and wee chickens by scores, And lavendered linen all ready to use, A-dreaming that they would be yours. Mother said: "She's a sport-making maiden, my son"; And a pretty sharp quarrel had we; O why do you prove by this wrong you have done That I saw not what mother could see? Never once did you say you was promised, Rose-Ann, Never once did I dream it to be; And it cuts to the heart to be treated, Rose-Ann, As you in your scorning treat me!

"A Wife Waits" Thomas Hardy

Will's at the dance in the Club-room below, Where the tall liquor-cups foam; I on the pavement up here by the Bow, Wait, wait, to steady him home. Will and his partner are treading a tune, Loving companions they be; Willy, before we were married in June, Said he loved no one but me; Said he would let his old pleasures all go Ever to live with his Dear. Will's at the dance in the Club-room below, Shivering I wait for him here

"The Voice" Thomas Hardy

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near? Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.

"Putting in the Seed" Frost

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, 5 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 passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed 10 On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

"A Broken Appointment" Thomas Hardy

You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did not come. You love not me, And love alone can lend you loyalty; -I know and knew it. But, unto the store Of human deeds divine in all but name, Was it not worth a little hour or more To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be You love not me?

"The Walk" Thomas Hardy

You did not walk with me Of late to the hill-top tree By the gated ways, As in earlier days; You were weak and lame, So you never came, And I went alone, and I did not mind, Not thinking of you as left behind. I walked up there to-day Just in the former way; Surveyed around The familiar ground By myself again: What difference, then? Only that underlying sense Of the look of a room on returning thence

"A Prayer in Spring" Frost

poet Robert Frost #2 on top 500 poets Poet's PagePoemsQuotesCommentsStatsE-BooksBiographyVideosShare on FacebookShare on Twitter Poems by Robert Frost : 16 / 191 « prev. poem next poem » A Prayer In Spring - Poem by Robert Frost Autoplay next video 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.

"A Servant to Servants" Frost

poet Robert Frost #2 on top 500 poets Poet's PagePoemsQuotesCommentsStatsE-BooksBiographyVideosShare on FacebookShare on Twitter Poems by Robert Frost : 18 / 191 « prev. poem next poem » A Servant To Servants - Poem by Robert Frost I didn't make you know how glad I was To have you come and camp here on our land. I promised myself to get down some day And see the way you lived, but I don't know! With a houseful of hungry men to feed I guess you'd find.... It seems to me I can't express my feelings any more Than I can raise my voice or want to lift My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to). Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. It's got so I don't even know for sure Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything. There's nothing but a voice-like left inside That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong. You take the lake. I look and look at it. I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water. I stand and make myself repeat out loud The advantages it has, so long and narrow, Like a deep piece of some old running river Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles Straight away through the mountain notch From the sink window where I wash the plates, And all our storms come up toward the house, Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter. It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit To step outdoors and take the water dazzle A sunny morning, or take the rising wind About my face and body and through my wrapper, When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den, And a cold chill shivered across the lake. I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water, Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? I expect, though, everyone's heard of it. In a book about ferns? Listen to that! You let things more like feathers regulate Your going and coming. And you like it here? I can see how you might. But I don't know! It would be different if more people came, For then there would be business. As it is, The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of shore That ought to be worth something, and may yet. But I don't count on it as much as Len. He looks on the bright side of everything, Including me. He thinks I'll be all right With doctoring. But it's not medicine-- Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so-- It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- From cooking meals for hungry hired men And washing dishes after them--from doing Things over and over that just won't stay done. By good rights I ought not to have so much Put on me, but there seems no other way. Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. He says the best way out is always through. And I agree to that, or in so far As that I can see no way out but through-- Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced. It's not that Len don't want the best for me. It was his plan our moving over in Beside the lake from where that day I showed you We used to live--ten miles from anywhere. We didn't change without some sacrifice, But Len went at it to make up the loss. His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun, But he works when he works as hard as I do-- Though there's small profit in comparisons. (Women and men will make them all the same.) But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much. He's into everything in town. This year It's highways, and he's got too many men Around him to look after that make waste. They take advantage of him shamefully, And proud, too, of themselves for doing so. We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk While I fry their bacon. Much they care! No more put out in what they do or say Than if I wasn't in the room at all. Coming and going all the time, they are: I don't learn what their names are, let alone Their characters, or whether they are safe To have inside the house with doors unlocked. I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not Afraid of me. There's two can play at that. I have my fancies: it runs in the family. My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him Locked up for years back there at the old farm. I've been away once--yes, I've been away. The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; You know the old idea--the only asylum Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, Rather than send their folks to such a place, Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. But it's not so: the place is the asylum. There they have every means proper to do with, And you aren't darkening other people's lives-- Worse than no good to them, and they no good To you in your condition; you can't know Affection or the want of it in that state. I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way. My father's brother, he went mad quite young. Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, Because his violence took on the form Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; But it's more likely he was crossed in love, Or so the story goes. It was some girl. Anyway all he talked about was love. They soon saw he would do someone a mischief If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended In father's building him a sort of cage, Or room within a room, of hickory poles, Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,-- A narrow passage all the way around. Anything they put in for furniture He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on. So they made the place comfortable with straw, Like a beast's stall, to ease their consciences. Of course they had to feed him without dishes. They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded With his clothes on his arm--all of his clothes. Cruel--it sounds. I 'spose they did the best They knew. And just when he was at the height, Father and mother married, and mother came, A bride, to help take care of such a creature, And accommodate her young life to his. That was what marrying father meant to her. She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and shout Until the strength was shouted out of him, And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, And let them go and make them twang until His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play-- The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though, They found a way to put a stop to it. He was before my time--I never saw him; But the pen stayed exactly as it was There in the upper chamber in the ell, A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. I often think of the smooth hickory bars. It got so I would say--you know, half fooling-- "It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"-- Just as you will till it becomes a habit. No wonder I was glad to get away. Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. I didn't want the blame if things went wrong. I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, And I looked to be happy, and I was, As I said, for a while--but I don't know! Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. And there's more to it than just window-views And living by a lake. I'm past such help-- Unless Len took the notion, which he won't, And I won't ask him--it's not sure enough. I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going: Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I? I almost think if I could do like you, Drop everything and live out on the ground-- But it might be, come night, I shouldn't like it, Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, And be glad of a good roof overhead. I've lain awake thinking of you, I'll warrant, More than you have yourself, some of these nights. The wonder was the tents weren't snatched away From over you as you lay in your beds. I haven't courage for a risk like that. Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from work, But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. There's work enough to do--there's always that; But behind's behind. The worst that you can do Is set me back a little more behind. I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway. I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.