Poems of Robert Frost. Large Collection, includes A Boy's Will, North of Boston and Mountain Interval (8 page)

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.

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.

There were three in the meadow by the brook

Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay,

With an eye always lifted toward the west

Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud

Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger

Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly

One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,

Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.

The town-bred farmer failed to understand.

“What is there wrong?”

“Something you just now said.”

“What did I say?”

“About our taking pains.”

“To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower?

I said that more than half an hour ago.

I said it to myself as much as you.”

“You didn’t know. But James is one big fool.

He thought you meant to find fault with his work.

That’s what the average farmer would have meant.

James would take time, of course, to chew it over

Before he acted: he’s just got round to act.”

“He is a fool if that’s the way he takes me.”

“Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something.

The hand that knows his business won’t be told

To do work better or faster—those two things.

I’m as particular as anyone:

Most likely I’d have served you just the same.

But I know you don’t understand our ways.

You were just talking what was in your mind,

What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting.

Tell you a story of what happened once:

I was up here in Salem at a man’s

Named Sanders with a gang of four or five

Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.

He was one of the kind sports call a spider,

All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy

From a humped body nigh as big’s a biscuit.

But work! that man could work, especially

If by so doing he could get more work

Out of his hired help. I’m not denying

He was hard on himself. I couldn’t find

That he kept any hours—not for himself.

Daylight and lantern-light were one to him:

I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night.

But what he liked was someone to encourage.

Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind

And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—

Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.

I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks

(We call that bulling). I’d been watching him.

So when he paired off with me in the hayfield

To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble.

I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders

Combed it down with a rake and says, ‘O. K.’

Everything went well till we reached the barn

With a big catch to empty in a bay.

You understand that meant the easy job

For the man up on top of throwing
down

The hay and rolling it off wholesale,

Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.

You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging

Under these circumstances, would you now?

But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,

And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,

Shouts like an army captain, ‘Let her come!’

Thinks I, D’ye mean it? ‘What was that you said?’

I asked out loud, so’s there’d be no mistake,

‘Did you say, Let her come?’ ‘Yes, let her come.’

He said it over, but he said it softer.

Never you say a thing like that to a man,

Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon

Murdered him as left out his middle name.

I’d built the load and knew right where to find it.

Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for

Like meditating, and then I just dug in

And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.

I looked over the side once in the dust

And caught sight of him treading-water-like,

Keeping his head above. ‘Damn ye,’ I says,

‘That gets ye!’ He squeaked like a squeezed rat.

That was the last I saw or heard of him.

I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.

As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck,

And sort of waiting to be asked about it,

One of the boys sings out, ‘Where’s the old man?’

‘I left him in the barn under the hay.

If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.’

They realized from the way I swobbed my neck

More than was needed something must be up.

They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.

They told me afterward. First they forked hay,

A lot of it, out into the barn floor.

Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle.

I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple

Before I buried him, or I couldn’t have managed.

They excavated more. ‘Go keep his wife

Out of the barn.’ Someone looked in a window,

And curse me if he wasn’t in the kitchen

Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet

Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.

He looked so clean disgusted from behind

There was no one that dared to stir him up,

Or let him know that he was being looked at.

Apparently I hadn’t buried him

(I may have knocked him down); but my just trying

To bury him had hurt his dignity.

He had gone to the house so’s not to meet me.

He kept away from us all afternoon.

We tended to his hay. We saw him out

After a while picking peas in his garden:

He couldn’t keep away from doing something.”

“Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?”

“No! and yet I don’t know—it’s hard to say.

I went about to kill him fair enough.”

“You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?”

“Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.”

A governor it was proclaimed this time,

When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire

Ancestral memories might come together.

And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow,

A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen off,

And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has gone.

Someone had literally run to earth

In an old cellar hole in a by-road

The origin of all the family there.

Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe

That now not all the houses left in town

Made shift to shelter them without the help

Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.

They were at Bow, but that was not enough:

Nothing would do but they must fix a day

To stand together on the crater’s verge

That turned them on the world, and try to fathom

The past and get some strangeness out of it.

But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain,

With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that misted.

The young folk held some hope out to each other

Till well toward noon when the storm settled down

With a swish in the grass. “What if the others

Are there,” they said. “It isn’t going to rain.”

Only one from a farm not far away

Strolled thither, not expecting he would find

Anyone else, but out of idleness.

One, and one other, yes, for there were two.

The second round the curving hillside road

Was a girl; and she halted some way off

To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind

At least to pass by and see who he was,

And perhaps hear some word about the weather.

This was some Stark she didn’t know. He nodded.

“No fête to-day,” he said.

“It looks that way.”

She swept the heavens, turning on her heel.

“I only idled down.”

“I idled down.”

Provision there had been for just such meeting

Of stranger cousins, in a family tree

Drawn on a sort of passport with the branch

Of the one bearing it done in detail—

Some zealous one’s laborious device.

She made a sudden movement toward her bodice,

As one who clasps her heart. They laughed together.

“Stark?” he inquired. “No matter for the proof.”

“Yes, Stark. And you?”

“I’m Stark.” He drew his passport.

“You know we might not be and still be cousins:

The town is full of Chases, Lowes, and Baileys,

All claiming some priority in Starkness.

My mother was a Lane, yet might have married

Anyone upon earth and still her children

Would have been Starks, and doubtless here to-day.”

“You riddle with your genealogy

Like a Viola. I don’t follow you.”

“I only mean my mother was a Stark

Several times over, and by marrying father

No more than brought us back into the name.”

“One ought not to be thrown into confusion

By a plain statement of relationship,

But I own what you say makes my head spin.

You take my card—you seem so good at such things—