Poetry by Robert Frost

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Flower-Gathering by Robert Frost

I left you in the morning,

And in the morning glow,

You walked a way beside me

To make me sad to go.

Do you know me in the gloaming,

Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?

Are you dumb because you know me not,

Or dumb because you know?

All for me? And not a question

For the faded flowers gay

That could take me from beside you

For the ages of a day?

They are yours, and be the measure

Of their worth for you to treasure,

The measure of the little while

That I've been long away.

A Line-Storm Song by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.

The road is forlorn all day,

Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,

And the hoof-prints vanish away.

The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,

Expend their bloom in vain.

Come over the hills and far with me,

And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves

In the wood-world's torn despair

Than now these numberless years the elves,

Although they are no less there:

All song of the woods is crushed like some

Wild, eerily shattered rose.

Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,

Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind

And bruit our singing down,

And the shallow waters aflutter with wind

From which to gather your gown.

What matter if we go clear to the west,

And come not through dry-shod?

For wilding brooch shall wet your breast

The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells

But it seems like the sea's return

To the ancient lands where it left the shells

Before the age of the fern;

And it seems like the time when after doubt

Our love came back amain.

Oh, come forth into the storm and rout

And be my love in the rain.

October by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

To-morrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow,

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know;

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes' sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--

For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Pan With Us by Robert Frost

Pan came out of the woods one day,--

His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,

The gray of the moss of walls were they,--

And stood in the sun and looked his fill

At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,

On a height of naked pasture land;

In all the country he did command

He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.

That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here

To this lean feeding save once a year

Someone to salt the half-wild steer,

Or homespun children with clicking pails

Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach

A new-world song, far out of reach,

For sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech

And the whimper of hawks beside the sun

Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:

Such pipes kept less of power to stir

The fruited bough of the juniper

And the fragile bluets clustered there

Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,

And the world had found new terms of worth.

He laid him down on the sun-burned earth

And raveled a flower and looked away--

Play? Play?--What should he play?

Into My Own The Vantage Point

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,

So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,

Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,

But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day

into their vastness I should steal away,

Fearless of ever finding open land,

or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,

Or those should not set forth upon my track

To overtake me, who should miss me here

And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him the knew--

Only more sure of all I though was true.

Revelation by Robert Frost

We make ourselves a place apart

Behind light words that tease and flout,

But oh, the agitated heart

Till someone really find us out.

'Tis pity if the case require

(Or so we say) that in the end

We speak the literal to inspire

The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play

At hide-and-seek to God afar,

So all who hide too well away

Must speak and tell us where they are.

The Tuft of Flowers by Robert 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.'

In Neglect by Robert Frost

They leave us so to the way we took,

As two in whom them were proved mistaken,

That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,

With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,

And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost

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 fulfill.

The Demiurge's Laugh by Robert Frost

It was far in the sameness of the wood;

I was running with joy on the Demon’s trail,

Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.

It was just as the light was beginning to fail

That I suddenly heard—all I needed to hear:

It has lasted me many and many a year.

The sound was behind me instead of before,

A sleepy sound, but mocking half,

As of one who utterly couldn’t care.

The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,

Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;

And well I knew what the Demon meant.

I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.

I felt as a fool to have been so caught,

And checked my steps to make pretence

It was something among the leaves I sought

(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).

Thereafter I sat me against a tree.

To the Thawing Wind by Robert Frost

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!

Bring the singer, bring the nester;

Give the buried flower a dream;

Make the settled snow-bank steam;

Find the brown beneath the white;

But whate'er you do to-night,

Bathe my window, make it flow,

Melt it as the ice will go;

Melt the glass and leave the sticks

Like a hermit's crucifix;

Burst into my narrow stall;

Swing the picture on the wall;

Run the rattling pages o'er;

Scatter poems on the floor;

Turn the poet out of door.

The Trial by Existence by Robert Frost

Even the bravest that are slain

Shall not dissemble their surprise

On waking to find valor reign,

Even as on earth, in paradise;

And where they sought without the sword

Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,

To find that the utmost reward

Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white

And is not shattered into dyes,

The light forever is morning light;

The hills are verdured pasture-wise;

The angle hosts with freshness go,

And seek with laughter what to brave;--

And binding all is the hushed snow

Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed

The gathering of the souls for birth,

The trial by existence named,

The obscuration upon earth.

And the slant spirits trooping by

In streams and cross- and counter-streams

Can but give ear to that sweet cry

For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned

To view once more the sacrifice

Of those who for some good discerned

Will gladly give up paradise.

And a white shimmering concourse rolls

Toward the throne to witness there

The speeding of devoted souls

Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,

Having first heard the life read out

That opens earthward, good and ill,

Beyond the shadow of a doubt;

And very beautifully God limns,

And tenderly, life's little dream,

But naught extenuates or dims,

Setting the thing that is supreme.

Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:

If the trees must, let them silently toss;

No bird is singing now, and if there is,

Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,

I will be long ere the earliest bird:

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

But see all wind-stirred.

Contents 1 Aaron Stump's Poetry Collection 1.1 Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost 1.2 Going For Water by Robert Frost 1.3 The Gift Outright 1.4 Rose Pogonias by Robert Frost 1.5 Ghost House by Robert Frost 1.6 Reluctance by Robert Frost 1.7 Stars by Robert Frost 1.8 Love and A Question by Robert Frost 1.9 A Dream Pang by Robert Frost

Aaron Stump's Poetry Collection

Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:

If the trees must, let them silently toss;

No bird is singing now, and if there is,

Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,

I will be long ere the earliest bird:

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

But see all wind-stirred.

Going For Water by Robert Frost

The well was dry beside the door,

And so we went with pail and can

Across the fields behind the house

To seek the brook if still it ran;

Not loth to have excuse to go,

Because the autumn eve was fair

(Though chill), because the fields were ours,

And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon

That slowly dawned behind the trees,

The barren boughs without the leaves,

Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused

Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,

Ready to run to hiding new

With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand

To listen ere we dared to look,

And in the hush we joined to make

We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,

A slender tinkling fall that made

Now drops that floated on the pool

Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia.

But we were England's, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak.

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

Rose Pogonias by Robert Frost

A saturated meadow,

Sun-shaped and jewel-small,

A circle scarcely wider

Than the trees around were tall;

Where winds were quite excluded,

And the air was stifling sweet

With the breath of many flowers,--

A temple of the heat.

There we bowed us in the burning,

As the sun's right worship is,

To pick where none could miss them

A thousand orchises;

For though the grass was scattered,

Yet every second spear

Seemed tipped with wings of color,

That tinged the atmosphere.

We raised a simple prayer

Before we left the spot,

That in the general mowing

That place might be forgot;

Or if not all so favoured,

Obtain such grace of hours,

That none should mow the grass there

While so confused with flowers.

=== Mowing by Robert 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 labour knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

Ghost House by Robert Frost

I Dwell in a lonely house I know

That vanished many a summer ago,

And left no trace but the cellar walls,

And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

The orchard tree has grown one copse

Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart

In that vanished abode there far apart

On that disused and forgotten road

That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout

And hush and cluck and flutter about:

I hear him begin far enough away

Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.

I know not who these mute folk are

Who share the unlit place with me--

Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--

With none among them that ever sings,

And yet, in view of how many things,

As sweet companions as might be had.

Reluctance by Robert 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 long 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?

Stars by Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate

O'er our tumultuous snow,

Which flows in shapes as tall as trees

When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,

Our faltering few steps on

To white rest, and a place of rest

Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,

Those stars like some snow-white

Minerva's snow-white marble eyes

Without the gift of sight.

Love and A Question by Robert Frost

I Dwell in a lonely house I know

That vanished many a summer ago,

And left no trace but the cellar walls,

And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

The orchard tree has grown one copse

Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart

In that vanished abode there far apart

On that disused and forgotten road

That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout

And hush and cluck and flutter about:

I hear him begin far enough away

Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.

I know not who these mute folk are

Who share the unlit place with me--

Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--

With none among them that ever sings,

And yet, in view of how many things,

As sweet companions as might be had.

A Dream Pang by Robert Frost

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song

Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;

And to the forest edge you came one day

(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,

But did not enter, though the wish was strong:

you shook your pensive head as who should say,

'I dare not -- too far in his footsteps stray --

He must seek me would he undo the wrong.'

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all

behind low boughs the trees let down outside;

And the sweet pang it cost me not to call

And tell you that I saw does still abide.

But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,

For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.