A stranger came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked with…
Posts published in “Poems”
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.…
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…
LOVERS, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. When the frosty window veil Was melted down at noon,…
What tree may not the fig be gathered from? The grape may not be gathered from the birch? It’s all you know the grape, or know the birch. As a…
When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast. I went to school…
Afield at dusk What things for dream there are when specter-like, Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled, I enter alone upon the stubbled filed, From which the laborers’ voices late…
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!”…
Love and forgetting might have carried them A little further up the mountain side With night so near, but not much further up. They must have halted soon in any…
Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me. Vague dream-head lifted out of…
COME with rain. O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; make the settled snowbank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But…
Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air That crossed me from sweet things, The scent…
I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a…
Grief may have thought it was grief. Care may have thought it was care. They were welcome to their belief, The overimportant pair. No, it took all the snows that…
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…
If tired of trees I seek again mankind, Well I know where to hie me–in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn. There amid lolling juniper…
He is said to have been the last Red man In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed– If you like to call such a sound a laugh.…
The sound of the closing outside door was all. You made no sound in the grass with your footfall, As far as you went from the door, which was not…
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…
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…
More than halfway up the pass Was a spring with a broken drinking glass, And whether the farmer drank or not His mare was sure to observe the spot By…
Out alone in the winter rain, Intent on giving and taking pain. But never was I far out of sight Of a certain upper-window light. The light was what it…
‘When I was just as far as I could walk From here today, There was an hour All still When leaning with my head again a flower I heard you…
`You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me Busy outdoors by lantern-light…
The old dog barks backwards without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.
I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by…
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. If we who sight…
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…
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 rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But the theory now goes That the apple’s a rose, And the pear is, and so’s The plum, I suppose.…
If heaven were to do again, And on the pasture bars, I leaned to line the figures in Between the dotted starts, I should be tempted to forget, I fear,…
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 shan’t be gone long.…
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…
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…
The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood, Like a pistil after the petals…
The mountain held the town as in a shadow I saw so much before I slept there once: I noticed that I missed stars in the west, Where its black…
It went many years, But at last came a knock, And I though of the door With no lock to lock. I blew out the light, I tip-toed the floor,…
Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living…
There’s a place called Far-away Meadow We never shall mow in again, Or such is the talk at the farmhouse: The meadow is finished with men. Then now is the…
Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However…
Over back where they speak of life as staying (‘You couldn’t call it living, for it ain’t’), There was an old, old house renewed with paint, And in it a…
I let myself in at the kitchen door. “It’s you,” she said. “I can’t get up. Forgive me Not answering your knock. I can no more Let people in than…
I. LONELINESS Her Word One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye;…
There overtook me and drew me in To his down-hill, early-morning stride, And set me five miles on my road Better than if he had had me ride, A man…
Having a wheel and four legs of its own Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone To get it anywhere that I can see. These hands have helped it go, and…
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,…
I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster As you might try a jewel in your hair. I’ve tried it fine with little breadth…
The fisherman’s swapping a yarn for a yarn Under the hand of the village barber, And her in the angle of house and barn His deep-sea dory has found a…
Blood has been harder to dam back than water. Just when we think we have it impounded safe Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!), It breaks away in…
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…
You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, Trying, I thought, to set…
He gave the solid rail a hateful kick. From far away there came an answering tick And then another tick. He knew the code: His hate had roused an engine…
In going from room to room in the dark, I reached out blindly to save my face, But neglected, however lightly, to lace My fingers and close my arms in…
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. i was…
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…
Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked…
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…
As far as I can see this autumn haze That spreading in the evening air both way, Makes the new moon look anything but new, And pours the elm-tree meadow…
I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house Of one room and one window and one door, The only dwelling in a waste cut over A…
“OH, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to…
We chanced in passing by that afternoon To catch it in a sort of special picture Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, Set well back from the road in rank lodged…
Here further up the mountain slope Than there was every any hope, My father built, enclosed a spring, Strung chains of wall round everything, Subdued the growth of earth to…
The bear puts both arms around the tree above her And draws it down as if it were a lover And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye, Then lets…
I’ve known ere now an interfering branch Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me. But that was in the woods, to hold my hand From striking at another alder’s…
For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend…
Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught. Man came to…
WHEN the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lowest chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast,…
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…
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…
The three stood listening to a fresh access Of wind that caught against the house a moment, Gulped snow, and then blew free again—the Coles Dressed, but dishevelled from some…
When I spread out my hand here today, I catch no more than a ray To feel of between thumb and fingers; No lasting effect of it lingers. There was…
Sea waves are green and wet, But up from where they die, Rise others vaster yet, And those are brown and dry. They are the sea made land To come…
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…
The surest thing there is is we are riders, And though none too successful at it, guiders, Through everything presented, land and tide And now the very air, of what…
We make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated hear Till someone really find us out. ‘Tis pity if the case require…
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…
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.…
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…
The witch that came (the withered hag) To wash the steps with pail and rag, Was once the beauty Abishag, The picture pride of Hollywood. Too many fall from great…