Nothing to say to all those marriages! She had made three herself to three of his. The score was even for them, three to three. But come to die she…
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…
To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, “How is the wife, Paul?”–and he’d disappear. Some said it was because be…
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…
It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm The flakes could find no landing place to form. Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold, And still…
Not only sands and gravels Were once more on their travels, But gulping muddy gallons Great boulders off their balance Bumped heads together dully And started down the gully. Whole…
The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore That water never did to land before. The…
You’ll wait a long, long time for anything much To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves. The sun and…
As vain to raise a voice as a sigh In the tumult of free leaves on high. What are you in the shadow of trees Engaged up there with the…
(To hear us talk) The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not bar Our passage to our journey’s end for good,…
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they…
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.…
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief,…
They sent him back to her. The letter came Saying… And she could have him. And before She could be sure there was no hidden ill Under the formal writing,…
I met a lady from the South who said (You won’t believe she said it, but she said it): “None of my family ever worked, or had A thing to…
He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an…
The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day. As long as it takes…
My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree; She walks the…
Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too, And the daft sun-assaulter, he That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead: Saave only me (Nor is it sad to thee!)…
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;…
All crying, ‘We will go with you, O Wind!’ The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go, And they end by bidding them…
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…
Her teacher’s certainty it must be Mabel Made Maple first take notice of her name. She asked her father and he told her, “Maple— Maple is right.” “But teacher told…
The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer…
The rain to the wind said, ‘You push and I’ll pelt.’ They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged–though not dead. I know how…
As told to a child When we locked up the house at night, We always locked the flowers outside And cut them off from window light. The time I dreamed…
A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show…
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…
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…
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 michievous, vagrant, seraphic look,…
The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove. Before the…
WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale By a misty fen that rang all night, And thus it was the maidens pale I knew so well, whose garments…
The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and…
No ship of all that under sail or steam Have gathered people to us more and more But Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dream Has been her anxious convoy in…
Now that they’ve got it settled whose I be, I’m going to tell them something they won’t like: They’ve got it settled wrong, and I can prove it. Flattered I…
I stayed the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountains, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking. MOTHER: Folks think a witch who…
It was long I lay Awake that night Wishing that night Would name the hour And tell me whether To call it day (Though not yet light) And give up…
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…
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step…
Was there even a cause too lost, Ever a cause that was lost too long, Or that showed with the lapse of time to vain For the generous tears of…
This saying good-by on the edge of the dark And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An…
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.…
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…
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,…
Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer…
Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?…
Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a…
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,…
Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars…
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to…
From where I lingered in a lull in march outside the sugar-house one night for choice, I called the fireman with a careful voice And bade him leave the pan…
The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a…
If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I’m not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming,…
The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean– Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth — Assorted characters of death and…
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble…
As I came to the edge of the woods, Thrush music — hark! Now if it was dusk outside, Inside it was dark. Too dark in the woods for a…
(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…
But outer Space, At least this far, For all the fuss Of the populace Stays more popular Than populous
Brown lived at such a lofty farm That everyone for miles could see His lantern when he did his chores In winter after half-past three. And many must have seen…
Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about– Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Though has need of no such things, For Thought…
It is blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing Than flowers will show for days…
Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for, Holding open a restive door, Looking down hill…
Inscription for a Garden Wall Winds blow the open grassy places bleak; But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek, They eddy over it too toppling weak To blow…
A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master, With doors that none but the wind ever closes, Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster; It stands in a…
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…
ONCE on the kind of day called “weather breeder,” When the heat slowly hazes and the sun By its own power seems to be undone, I was half boring through,…
I stay; But it isn’t as if There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade. I can just see my tent pegged,…
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…
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain –and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the…
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has…
A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be And not melt snow or start…
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…
For Lincoln MacVeagh Never tell me that not one star of all That slip from heaven at night and softly fall Has been picked up with stones to build a…
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…
I didn’t make you know how glad I was To have you come and camp here on our land. I promised myself to get down some day And see the…
A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth.
OH, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of…
Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea-fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told Some of the blowing dust was gold. All the dust…
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…