Poems of Robert Frost. Large Collection, includes A Boy's Will, North of Boston and Mountain Interval (3 page)

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 for ever is morning light;

The hills are verdured pasture-wise;

The angel 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.

Nor is there wanting in the press

Some spirit to stand simply forth,

Heroic in its nakedness,

Against the uttermost of earth.

The tale of earth’s unhonored things

Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;

And the mind whirls and the heart sings,

And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:

‘One thought in agony of strife

The bravest would have by for friend,

The memory that he chose the life;

But the pure fate to which you go

Admits no memory of choice,

Or the woe were not earthly woe

To which you give the assenting voice.’

And so the choice must be again,

But the last choice is still the same;

And the awe passes wonder then,

And a hush falls for all acclaim.

And God has taken a flower of gold

And broken it, and used therefrom

The mystic link to bind and hold

Spirit to matter till death come.

’Tis of the essence of life here,

Though we choose greatly, still to lack

The lasting memory at all clear,

That life has for us on the wrack

Nothing but what we somehow chose;

Thus are we wholly stripped of pride

In the pain that has but one close,

Bearing it crushed and mystified.

Thus of old the Douglas did:

He left his land as he was bid

With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce

In a golden case with a golden lid,

To carry the same to the Holy Land;

By which we see and understand

That that was the place to carry a heart

At loyalty and love’s command,

And that was the case to carry it in.

The Douglas had not far to win

Before he came to the land of Spain,

Where long a holy war had been

Against the too-victorious Moor;

And there his courage could not endure

Not to strike a blow for God

Before he made his errand sure.

And ever it was intended so,

That a man for God should strike a blow,

No matter the heart he has in charge

For the Holy Land where hearts should go.

But when in battle the foe were met,

The Douglas found him sore beset,

With only strength of the fighting arm

For one more battle passage yet—

And that as vain to save the day

As bring his body safe away—

Only a signal deed to do

And a last sounding word to say.

The heart he wore in a golden chain

He swung and flung forth into the plain,

And followed it crying ‘Heart or death!’

And fighting over it perished fain.

So may another do of right,

Give a heart to the hopeless fight,

The more of right the more he loves;

So may another redouble might

For a few swift gleams of the angry brand,

Scorning greatly not to demand

In equal sacrifice with his

The heart he bore to the Holy Land.

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 leveled 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.”

Two fairies it was

On a still summer day

Came forth in the woods

With the flowers to play.

The flowers they plucked

They cast on the ground

For others, and those

For still others they found.

Flower-guided it was

That they came as they ran

On something that lay

In the shape of a man.

The snow must have made

The feathery bed

When this one fell

On the sleep of the dead.

But the snow was gone

A long time ago,

And the body he wore

Nigh gone with the snow.

The fairies drew near

And keenly espied

A ring on his hand

And a chain at his side.

They knelt in the leaves

And eerily played

With the glittering things,

And were not afraid.

And when they went home

To hide in their burrow,

They took them along

To play with to-morrow.

When
you
came on death,

Did you not come flower-guided

Like the elves in the wood?

I remember that I did.

But I recognised death

With sorrow and dread,

And I hated and hate

The spoils of the dead.

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 no little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach

A new-world song, far out of reach,

For a 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 ravelled a flower and looked away—

Play? Play?—What should he play?

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.

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,

It will be long ere the earliest bird:

So close the windows and not hear the wind,

But see all wind-stirred.

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, easily 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.

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.