Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

‘Nor want to!
She thinks if it was bad to live with him,
It must be right to leave him.’

‘Which is wrong!’

‘Yes, but he should have married her.’

‘I know.’

‘The strain’s been too much for her all these years:
I can’t explain it any other way.
It’s different with a man, at least with John:
He knows he’s kinder than the run of men.
Better than married ought to be as good
As married--that’s what he has always said.
I know the way he’s felt--but all the same!’

‘I wonder why he doesn’t marry her
And end it.’

‘Too late now: she wouldn’t have him.
He’s given her time to think of something else.
That’s his mistake. The dear knows my interest
Has been to keep the thing from breaking up.
This is a good home: I don’t ask for better.
But when I’ve said, “Why shouldn’t they be married,”
He’d say, “Why should they?” no more words than that.’

‘And after all why should they? John’s been fair
I take it. What was his was always hers.
There was no quarrel about property.’

‘Reason enough, there was no property.
A friend or two as good as own the farm,
Such as it is. It isn’t worth the mortgage.’

‘I mean Estelle has always held the purse.’

‘The rights of that are harder to get at.
I guess Estelle and I have filled the purse.
’Twas we let him have money, not he us.
John’s a bad farmer. I’m not blaming him.
Take it year in, year out, he doesn’t make much.
We came here for a home for me, you know,
Estelle to do the housework for the board
Of both of us. But look how it turns out:
She seems to have the housework, and besides
Half of the outdoor work, though as for that,
He’d say she does it more because she likes it.
You see our pretty things are all outdoors.
Our hens and cows and pigs are always better
Than folks like us have any business with.
Farmers around twice as well off as we
Haven’t as good. They don’t go with the farm.
One thing you can’t help liking about John,
He’s fond of nice things--too fond, some would say.
But Estelle don’t complain: she’s like him there.
She wants our hens to be the best there are.
You never saw this room before a show,
Full of lank, shivery, half-drowned birds
In separate coops, having their plumage done.
The smell of the wet feathers in the heat!
You spoke of John’s not being safe to stay with.
You don’t know what a gentle lot we are:
We wouldn’t hurt a hen! You ought to see us
Moving a flock of hens from place to place.
We’re not allowed to take them upside down,
All we can hold together by the legs.
Two at a time’s the rule, one on each arm,
No matter how far and how many times
We have to go.’

‘You mean that’s John’s idea.’

‘And we live up to it; or I don’t know
What childishness he wouldn’t give way to.
He manages to keep the upper hand
On his own farm. He’s boss. But as to hens:
We fence our flowers in and the hens range.
Nothing’s too good for them. We say it pays.
John likes to tell the offers he has had,
Twenty for this cock, twenty-five for that.
He never takes the money. If they’re worth
That much to sell, they’re worth as much to keep.
Bless you, it’s all expense, though. Reach me down
The little tin box on the cupboard shelf,
The upper shelf, the tin box. That’s the one.
I’ll show you. Here you are.’

‘What’s this?’

‘A bill--
For fifty dollars for one Langshang cock--
Receipted. And the cock is in the yard.’

‘Not in a glass case, then?’

‘He’d need a tall one:
He can eat off a barrel from the ground.
He’s been in a glass case, as you may say,
The Crystal Palace, London. He’s imported.
John bought him, and we paid the bill with beads--
Wampum, I call it. Mind, we don’t complain.
But you see, don’t you, we take care of him.’

‘And like it, too. It makes it all the worse.’

‘It seems as if. And that’s not all: he’s helpless
In ways that I can hardly tell you of.
Sometimes he gets possessed to keep accounts
To see where all the money goes so fast.
You know how men will be ridiculous.
But it’s just fun the way he gets bedeviled--
If he’s untidy now, what will he be--?’

‘It makes it all the worse. You must be blind.’

‘Estelle’s the one. You needn’t talk to me.’

‘Can’t you and I get to the root of it?
What’s the real trouble? What will satisfy her?’

‘It’s as I say: she’s turned from him, that’s all.’

‘But why, when she’s well off? Is it the neighbours,
Being cut off from friends?’

‘We have our friends.
That isn’t it. Folks aren’t afraid of us.’

‘She’s let it worry her. You stood the strain,
And you’re her mother.’

‘But I didn’t always.
I didn’t relish it along at first.
But I got wonted to it. And besides--
John said I was too old to have grandchildren.
But what’s the use of talking when it’s done?
She won’t come back--it’s worse than that--she can’t.’

‘Why do you speak like that? What do you know?
What do you mean?--she’s done harm to herself?’

‘I mean she’s married--married someone else.’

‘Oho, oho!’

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘Yes, I do,
Only too well. I knew there must be something!
So that was what was back. She’s bad, that’s all!’

‘Bad to get married when she had the chance?’

‘Nonsense! See what she’s done! But who, but who--’

‘Who’d marry her straight out of such a mess?
Say it right out--no matter for her mother.
The man was found. I’d better name no names.
John himself won’t imagine who he is.’

‘Then it’s all up. I think I’ll get away.
You’ll be expecting John. I pity Estelle;
I suppose she deserves some pity, too.
You ought to have the kitchen to yourself
To break it to him. You may have the job.’

‘You needn’t think you’re going to get away.
John’s almost here. I’ve had my eye on someone
Coming down Ryan’s Hill. I thought ’twas him.
Here he is now. This box! Put it away.
And this bill.’

‘What’s the hurry? He’ll unhitch.’

‘No, he won’t, either. He’ll just drop the reins
And turn Doll out to pasture, rig and all.
She won’t get far before the wheels hang up
On something--there’s no harm. See, there he is!
My, but he looks as if he must have heard!’

John threw the door wide but he didn’t enter.
‘How are you, neighbour? Just the man I’m after.
Isn’t it Hell,’ he said. ‘I want to know.
Come out here if you want to hear me talk.
I’ll talk to you, old woman, afterward.
I’ve got some news that maybe isn’t news.
What are they trying to do to me, these two?’

‘Do go along with him and stop his shouting.’
She raised her voice against the closing door:
‘Who wants to hear your news, you--dreadful fool?’

_The Fear_

A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
A horse’s hoof pawed once the hollow floor,
And the back of the gig they stood beside
Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel,
The woman spoke out sharply, ‘Whoa, stand still!
I saw it just as plain as a white plate,’
She said, ‘as the light on the dashboard ran
Along the bushes at the roadside--a man’s face.
You _must_ have seen it too.’

‘I didn’t see it.
Are you sure--’

‘Yes, I’m sure!’

‘--it was a face?’

‘Joel, I’ll have to look. I can’t go in,
I can’t, and leave a thing like that unsettled.
Doors locked and curtains drawn will make no difference.
I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
And the key rattled loudly into place
Seemed to warn someone to be getting out
At one door as we entered at another.
What if I’m right, and someone all the time--
Don’t hold my arm!’

‘I say it’s someone passing.’

‘You speak as if this were a travelled road.
You forget where we are. What is beyond
That he’d be going to or coming from
At such an hour of night, and on foot too?
What was he standing still for in the bushes?’

‘It’s not so very late--it’s only dark.
There’s more in it than you’re inclined to say.
Did he look like--?’

‘He looked like anyone.
I’ll never rest to-night unless I know.
Give me the lantern.’

‘You don’t want the lantern.’

She pushed past him and got it for herself.

‘You’re not to come,’ she said. ‘This is my business.
If the time’s come to face it, I’m the one
To put it the right way. He’d never dare--
Listen! He kicked a stone. Hear that, hear that!
He’s coming towards us. Joel, _go_ in--please.
Hark!--I don’t hear him now. But please go in.’

‘In the first place you can’t make me believe it’s--’

‘It is--or someone else he’s sent to watch.
And now’s the time to have it out with him
While we know definitely where he is.
Let him get off and he’ll be everywhere
Around us, looking out of trees and bushes
Till I sha’n’t dare to set a foot outdoors.
And I can’t stand it. Joel, let me go!’

‘But it’s nonsense to think he’d care enough.’

‘You mean you couldn’t understand his caring.
Oh, but you see he hadn’t had enough--
Joel, I won’t--I won’t--I promise you.
We mustn’t say hard things. You mustn’t either.’

‘I’ll be the one, if anybody goes!
But you give him the advantage with this light.
What couldn’t he do to us standing here!
And if to see was what he wanted, why
He has seen all there was to see and gone.’

He appeared to forget to keep his hold,
But advanced with her as she crossed the grass.

‘What do you want?’ she cried to all the dark.
She stretched up tall to overlook the light
That hung in both hands hot against her skirt.

‘There’s no one; so you’re wrong,’ he said.

‘There is.--
What do you want?’ she cried, and then herself
Was startled when an answer really came.

‘Nothing.’ It came from well along the road.

She reached a hand to Joel for support:
The smell of scorching woollen made her faint.

‘What are you doing round this house at night?’

‘Nothing.’ A pause: there seemed no more to say.

And then the voice again: ‘You seem afraid.
I saw by the way you whipped up the horse.
I’ll just come forward in the lantern light
And let you see.’

‘Yes, do.--Joel, go back!’

She stood her ground against the noisy steps
That came on, but her body rocked a little.

‘You see,’ the voice said.

‘Oh.’ She looked and looked.

‘You don’t see--I’ve a child here by the hand.
A robber wouldn’t have his family with him.’

‘What’s a child doing at this time of night--?’

‘Out walking. Every child should have the memory
Of at least one long-after-bedtime walk.
What, son?’

‘Then I should think you’d try to find
Somewhere to walk--’

‘The highway, as it happens--
We’re stopping for the fortnight down at Dean’s.’

‘But if that’s all--Joel--you realize--
You won’t think anything. You understand?
You understand that we have to be careful.
This is a very, very lonely place.
Joel!’ She spoke as if she couldn’t turn.
The swinging lantern lengthened to the ground,
It touched, it struck, it clattered and went out.

_The Self-Seeker_

‘Willis, I didn’t want you here to-day:
The lawyer’s coming for the company.
I’m going to sell my soul, or, rather, feet.
Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know.’

‘With you the feet have nearly been the soul;
And if you’re going to sell them to the devil,
I want to see you do it. When’s he coming?’

‘I half suspect you knew, and came on purpose
To try to help me drive a better bargain.’

‘Well, if it’s true! Yours are no common feet.
The lawyer don’t know what it is he’s buying:
So many miles you might have walked you won’t walk.
You haven’t run your forty orchids down.
What does he think?--How _are_ the blessed feet?
The doctor’s sure you’re going to walk again?’

‘He thinks I’ll hobble. It’s both legs and feet.’

‘They must be terrible--I mean to look at.’

‘I haven’t dared to look at them uncovered.
Through the bed blankets I remind myself
Of a starfish laid out with rigid points.’

‘The wonder is it hadn’t been your head.’

‘It’s hard to tell you how I managed it.
When I saw the shaft had me by the coat,
I didn’t try too long to pull away,
Or fumble for my knife to cut away,
I just embraced the shaft and rode it out--
Till Weiss shut off the water in the wheel-pit.
That’s how I think I didn’t lose my head.
But my legs got their knocks against the ceiling.’

‘Awful. Why didn’t they throw off the belt
Instead of going clear down in the wheel-pit?’

‘They say some time was wasted on the belt--
Old streak of leather--doesn’t love me much
Because I make him spit fire at my knuckles,
The way Ben Franklin used to make the kite-string.
That must be it. Some days he won’t stay on.
That day a woman couldn’t coax him off.
He’s on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth
Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys.
Everything goes the same without me there.
You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw
Caterwaul to the hills around the village
As they both bite the wood. It’s all our music.
One ought as a good villager to like it.
No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound,
And it’s our life.’

‘Yes, when it’s not our death.’

‘You make that sound as if it wasn’t so
With everything. What we live by we die by.
I wonder where my lawyer is. His train’s in.
I want this over with; I’m hot and tired.’

‘You’re getting ready to do something foolish.’

‘Watch for him, will you, Will? You let him in.
I’d rather Mrs. Corbin didn’t know;
I’ve boarded here so long, she thinks she owns me.
You’re bad enough to manage without her.’

‘I’m going to be worse instead of better.
You’ve got to tell me how far this is gone:
Have you agreed to any price?’

‘Five hundred.
Five hundred--five--five! One, two, three, four, five.
You needn’t look at me.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I told you, Willis, when you first came in.
Don’t you be hard on me. I have to take
What I can get. You see they have the feet,
Which gives them the advantage in the trade.
I can’t get back the feet in any case.’

‘But your flowers, man, you’re selling out your flowers.’

‘Yes, that’s one way to put it--all the flowers
Of every kind everywhere in this region
For the next forty summers--call it forty.
But I’m not selling those, I’m giving them,
They never earned me so much as one cent:
Money can’t pay me for the loss of them.
No, the five hundred was the sum they named
To pay the doctor’s bill and tide me over.
It’s that or fight, and I don’t want to fight--
I just want to get settled in my life,
Such as it’s going to be, and know the worst,
Or best--it may not be so bad. The firm
Promise me all the shooks I want to nail.’

‘But what about your flora of the valley?’

‘You have me there. But that--you didn’t think
That was worth money to me? Still I own
It goes against me not to finish it
For the friends it might bring me. By the way,
I had a letter from Burroughs--did I tell you?--
About my _Cyprepedium reginæ_;
He says it’s not reported so far north.
There! there’s the bell. He’s rung. But you go down
And bring him up, and don’t let Mrs. Corbin.--
Oh, well, we’ll soon be through with it. I’m tired.’

Willis brought up besides the Boston lawyer
A little barefoot girl who in the noise
Of heavy footsteps in the old frame house,
And baritone importance of the lawyer,
Stood for a while unnoticed with her hands
Shyly behind her.

‘Well, and how is Mister--’

The lawyer was already in his satchel
As if for papers that might bear the name
He hadn’t at command. ‘You must excuse me,
I dropped in at the mill and was detained.’

‘Looking round, I suppose,’ said Willis.

‘Yes,
Well, yes.’

‘Hear anything that might prove useful?’

The Broken One saw Anne. ‘Why, here is Anne.
What do you want, dear? Come, stand by the bed;
Tell me what is it?’ Anne just wagged her dress
With both hands held behind her. ‘Guess,’ she said.

‘Oh, guess which hand? My, my! Once on a time
I knew a lovely way to tell for certain
By looking in the ears. But I forget it.
Er, let me see. I think I’ll take the right.
That’s sure to be right even if it’s wrong.
Come, hold it out. Don’t change.--A Ram’s Horn orchid!
A Ram’s Horn! What would I have got, I wonder,
If I had chosen left. Hold out the left.
Another Ram’s Horn! Where did you find those,
Under what beech tree, on what woodchuck’s knoll?’

Anne looked at the large lawyer at her side,
And thought she wouldn’t venture on so much.

‘Were there no others?’

‘There were four or five.
I knew you wouldn’t let me pick them all.’

‘I wouldn’t--so I wouldn’t. You’re the girl!
You see Anne has her lesson learned by heart.’

‘I wanted there should be some there next year.’

‘Of course you did. You left the rest for seed,
And for the backwoods woodchuck. You’re the girl!
A Ram’s Horn orchid seedpod for a woodchuck
Sounds something like. Better than farmer’s beans
To a discriminating appetite,
Though the Ram’s Horn is seldom to be had
In bushel lots--doesn’t come on the market.
But, Anne, I’m troubled; have you told me all?
You’re hiding something. That’s as bad as lying.
You ask this lawyer man. And it’s not safe
With a lawyer at hand to find you out.
Nothing is hidden from some people, Anne.
You don’t tell me that where you found a Ram’s Horn
You didn’t find a Yellow Lady’s Slipper.
What did I tell you? What? I’d blush, I would.
Don’t you defend yourself. If it was there,
Where is it now, the Yellow Lady’s Slipper?’

‘Well, wait--it’s common--it’s too _common_.’

‘Common?
The Purple Lady’s Slipper’s commoner.’

‘I didn’t bring a Purple Lady’s Slipper
To _You_--to you I mean--they’re both too common.’

The lawyer gave a laugh among his papers
As if with some idea that she had scored.

‘I’ve broken Anne of gathering bouquets.
It’s not fair to the child. It can’t be helped though:
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.
Somehow I’ll make it right with her--she’ll see.
She’s going to do my scouting in the field,
Over stone walls and all along a wood
And by a river bank for water flowers,
The floating Heart, with small leaf like a heart,
And at the _sinus_ under water a fist
Of little fingers all kept down but one,
And that thrust up to blossom in the sun
As if to say, “You! You’re the Heart’s desire.”
Anne has a way with flowers to take the place
Of that she’s lost: she goes down on one knee
And lifts their faces by the chin to hers
And says their names, and leaves them where they are.’

The lawyer wore a watch the case of which
Was cunningly devised to make a noise
Like a small pistol when he snapped it shut
At such a time as this. He snapped it now.

‘Well, Anne, go, dearie. Our affair will wait.
The lawyer man is thinking of his train.
He wants to give me lots and lots of money
Before he goes, because I hurt myself,
And it may take him I don’t know how long.
But put our flowers in water first. Will, help her:
The pitcher’s too full for her. There’s no cup?
Just hook them on the inside of the pitcher.
Now run.--Get out your documents! You see
I have to keep on the good side of Anne.
I’m a great boy to think of number one.
And you can’t blame me in the place I’m in.
Who will take care of my necessities
Unless I do?’

‘A pretty interlude,’
The lawyer said. ‘I’m sorry, but my train--
Luckily terms are all agreed upon.
You only have to sign your name. Right--there.’

‘You, Will, stop making faces. Come round here
Where you can’t make them. What is it you want?
I’ll put you out with Anne. Be good or go.’

‘You don’t mean you will sign that thing unread?’

‘Make yourself useful then, and read it for me.
Isn’t it something I have seen before?’

‘You’ll find it is. Let your friend look at it.’

‘Yes, but all that takes time, and I’m as much
In haste to get it over with as you.
But read it, read it. That’s right, draw the curtain:
Half the time I don’t know what’s troubling me.--
What do you say, Will? Don’t you be a fool,
You, crumpling folkses legal documents.
Out with it if you’ve any real objection.’

‘Five hundred dollars!’

‘What would you think right?’

‘A thousand wouldn’t be a cent too much;
You know it, Mr. Lawyer. The sin is
Accepting anything before he knows
Whether he’s ever going to walk again.
It smells to me like a dishonest trick.’

‘I think--I think--from what I heard to-day--
And saw myself--he would be ill-advised--’

‘What did you hear, for instance?’ Willis said.

‘Now the place where the accident occurred--’

The Broken One was twisted in his bed.
‘This is between you two apparently.
Where I come in is what I want to know.
You stand up to it like a pair of cocks.
Go outdoors if you want to fight. Spare me.
When you come back, I’ll have the papers signed.
Will pencil do? Then, please, your fountain pen.
One of you hold my head up from the pillow.’

Willis flung off the bed. ‘I wash my hands--
I’m no match--no, and don’t pretend to be--’

The lawyer gravely capped his fountain pen.
‘You’re doing the wise thing: you won’t regret it.
We’re very sorry for you.’

Willis sneered:
‘Who’s _we_?--some stockholders in Boston?
I’ll go outdoors, by gad, and won’t come back.’

‘Willis, bring Anne back with you when you come.
Yes. Thanks for caring. Don’t mind Will: he’s savage.
He thinks you ought to pay me for my flowers.
You don’t know what I mean about the flowers.
Don’t stop to try to now. You’ll miss your train.
Good-bye.’ He flung his arms around his face.

_The Wood-Pile_

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey 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 grey 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 labour of his axe,
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.

_Good Hours_

I had for my winter evening walk--
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.

MOUNTAIN INTERVAL

_The Road Not Taken_

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.

_Christmas Trees_

A CHRISTMAS CIRCULAR LETTER

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods--the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, ‘There aren’t enough to be worth while.’

‘I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.’

‘You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.’
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded ‘Yes’ to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, ‘That would do.’
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

He said, ‘A thousand.’

‘A thousand Christmas trees!--at what apiece?’

He felt some need of softening that to me:
‘A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.’

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

_An Old Man’s Winter Night_

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering the need
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.

_The Exposed Nest_

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
’Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory--have you?--
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

_A Patch of Old Snow_

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten--
If I ever read it.

_In the Home Stretch_

She stood against the kitchen sink, and looked
Over the sink out through a dusty window
At weeds the water from the sink made tall.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has--parlor, bed-room,
And dining-room--thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.
And now and then a smudged, infernal face
Looked in a door behind her and addressed
Her back. She always answered without turning.

‘Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?’

‘Put it on top of something that’s on top
Of something else,’ she laughed. ‘Oh, put it where
You can to-night, and go. It’s almost dark;
You must be getting started back to town.’

Another blackened face thrust in and looked
And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently,
‘What are you seeing out the window, _lady_?’

‘Never was I beladied so before.
Would evidence of having been called lady
More than so many times make me a lady
In common law, I wonder.’

‘But I ask,
What are you seeing out the window, lady?’

‘What I’ll be seeing more of in the years
To come as here I stand and go the round
Of many plates with towels many times.’

‘And what is that? You only put me off.’

‘Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan
More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;
A little stretch of mowing-field for you;
Not much of that until I come to woods
That end all. And it’s scarce enough to call
A view.’

‘And yet you think you like it, dear?’

‘That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope
I like it. Bang goes something big away
Off there upstairs. The very tread of men
As great as those is shattering to the frame
Of such a little house. Once left alone,
You and I, dear, will go with softer steps
Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none
But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands
Will ever slam the doors.’

‘I think you see
More than you like to own to out that window.’

‘No; for besides the things I tell you of,
I only see the years. They come and go
In alternation with the weeds, the field,
The wood.’

‘What kind of years?’

‘Why, latter years--
Different from early years.’

‘I see them, too.
You didn’t count them?’

‘No, the further off
So ran together that I didn’t try to.
It can scarce be that they would be in number
We’d care to know, for we are not young now.
And bang goes something else away off there.
It sounds as if it were the men went down,
And every crash meant one less to return
To lighted city streets we, too, have known,
But now are giving up for country darkness.’

‘Come from that window where you see too much,
And take a livelier view of things from here.
They’re going. Watch this husky swarming up
Over the wheel into the sky-high seat,
Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose
At the flame burning downward as he sucks it.’

‘See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof
How dark it’s getting. Can you tell what time
It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!
What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.
A wire she is of silver, as new as we
To everything. Her light won’t last us long.
It’s something, though, to know we’re going to have her
Night after night and stronger every night
To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,
The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;
Ask them to help you get it on its feet.
We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!’

‘They’re not gone yet.’

‘We’ve got to have the stove,
Whatever else we want for. And a light.
Have we a piece of candle if the lamp
And oil are buried out of reach?’

Again
The house was full of tramping, and the dark,
Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.
A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,
To which they set it true by eye; and then
Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,
So much too light and airy for their strength
It almost seemed to come ballooning up,
Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.
‘A fit!’ said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder.
‘It’s good luck when you move in to begin
With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,
It’s not so bad in the country, settled down,
When people’re getting on in life. You’ll like it.’
Joe said: ‘You big boys ought to find a farm,
And make good farmers, and leave other fellows
The city work to do. There’s not enough
For everybody as it is in there.’
‘God!’ one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:
‘Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm.’
But Jimmy only made his jaw recede
Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say
He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy
Who said with seriousness that made them laugh,
‘Ma friend, you ain’t know what it is you’re ask.’
He doffed his cap and held it with both hands
Across his chest to make as ’twere a bow:
‘We’re giving you our chances on de farm.’
And then they all turned to with deafening boots
And put each other bodily out of the house.
‘Good-bye to them! We puzzle them. They think--
I don’t know what they think we see in what
They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems
The back some farm presents us; and your woods
To northward from your window at the sink,
Waiting to steal a step on us whenever
We drop our eyes or turn to other things,
As in the game “Ten-step” the children play.’

‘Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.
All they could say was “God!” when you proposed
Their coming out and making useful farmers.’

‘Did they make something lonesome go through you?
It would take more than them to sicken you--
Us of our bargain. But they left us so
As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.
They almost shook _me_.’

‘It’s all so much
What we have always wanted, I confess
It’s seeming bad for a moment makes it seem
Even worse still, and so on down, down, down.
It’s nothing; it’s their leaving us at dusk.
I never bore it well when people went.
The first night after guests have gone, the house
Seems haunted or exposed. I always take
A personal interest in the locking up
At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off.’
He fetched a dingy lantern from behind
A door. ‘There’s that we didn’t lose! And these!’--
Some matches he unpocketed. ‘For food--
The meals we’ve had no one can take from us.
I wish that everything on earth were just
As certain as the meals we’ve had. I wish
The meals we haven’t had were, anyway.
What have you you know where to lay your hands on?’

‘The bread we bought in passing at the store.
There’s butter somewhere, too.’

‘Let’s rend the bread.
I’ll light the fire for company for you;
You’ll not have any other company
Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday
To look us over and give us his idea
Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.
He’ll know what he would do if he were we,
And all at once. He’ll plan for us and plan
To help us, but he’ll take it out in planning.
Well, you can set the table with the loaf.
Let’s see you find your loaf. I’ll light the fire.
I like chairs occupying other chairs
Not offering a lady--’

‘There again, Joe!
_You’re tired._’

‘I’m drunk-nonsensical tired out;
Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a day’s work
To empty one house of all household goods
And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away,
Although you do no more than dump them down.’

‘Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.’

‘It’s all so much what I have always wanted,
I can’t believe it’s what you wanted, too.’

‘Shouldn’t you like to know?’

‘I’d like to know
If it is what you wanted, then how much
You wanted it for me.’

‘A troubled conscience!
You don’t want me to tell if _I_ don’t know.’

‘I don’t want to find out what can’t be known.
But who first said the word to come?’

‘My dear,
It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings--there are no such things.
There are only middles.’

‘What is this?’

‘This life?
Our sitting here by lantern-light together
Amid the wreckage of a former home?
You won’t deny the lantern isn’t new.
The stove is not, and you are not to me,
Nor I to you.’

‘Perhaps you never were?’

‘It would take me forever to recite
All that’s not new in where we find ourselves.
New is a word for fools in towns who think
Style upon style in dress and thought at last
Must get somewhere. I’ve heard you say as much.
No, this is no beginning.’

‘Then an end?’

‘End is a gloomy word.’

‘Is it too late
To drag you out for just a good-night call
On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope
By starlight in the grass for a last peach
The neighbors may not have taken as their right
When the house wasn’t lived in? I’ve been looking:
I doubt if they have left us many grapes.
Before we set ourselves to right the house,
The first thing in the morning, out we go
To go the round of apple, cherry, peach,
Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.
All of a farm it is.’

‘I know this much:
I’m going to put you in your bed, if first
I have to make you build it. Come, the light.’

When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
The fire got out through crannies in the stove
And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
As much at home as if they’d always danced there.

_The Telephone_

‘When I was just as far as I could walk
From here to-day,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the window sill--
Do you remember what it was you said?’

‘First tell me what it was you thought you heard.’

‘Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
_Someone_ said “Come”--I heard it as I bowed.’

‘I may have thought as much, but not aloud.’

‘Well, so I came.’

_Meeting and Passing_

As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol

Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.

_Hyla Brook_

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 Oven Bird_

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.

_Bond and Free_

Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about--
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius’ disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.

His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.

_Birches_

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal 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.

_Pea Brush_

I walked down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!--
All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flowers’ backs.

They might be good for garden things
To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,
And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
And since it was coming up had to come.

_Putting in the Seed_

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

_A Time to Talk_

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

_The Cow in Apple Time_