Public-domain ebook
Selected Poems
by Robert Frost
Language: en1,462 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Poetry·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #59824.
About this book
Selected Poems gathers a handful of Robert Frost’s early verses, each opening with vivid, almost hallucinatory scenes that blend rural life with a surreal edge. The collection begins with a fragmented tableau of a cow whose “face is flecked with pomace” and a runaway colt startled by early snow, moving swiftly into an old man’s winter night where frost gathers “in separate stars” on a pane. The poems shift through domestic confrontations, a grieving couple’s dialogue about a lost child, and the weary musings of a hired hand, all rendered in a stream of consciousness that blurs dialogue and description. The opening pieces set a tone of stark, weather‑worn imagery and a focus on the ordinary turned uncanny, inviting readers into Frost’s world of farms, frost, and the quiet dramas that unfold there.
The voice is unmistakably Frost’s: plain‑spoken yet layered with rhythm, employing colloquial speech and a keen ear for the sounds of New England speech. The style is compact, often elliptical, reflecting the modernist turn of the early twentieth century while retaining a rustic sensibility. Readers who appreciate poetry that captures the tension between the natural world and human frailty, especially those drawn to contemplative, regionally grounded verse, will find this selection rewarding.
The opening · free to read
Home Burial
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 and then undid it To raise herself and look again. He spoke Advancing toward her: "What is it you see From up there always—-for I want to know." She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, And her face changed from terrified to dull. He said to gain time: "What is it you see?" Mounting until she cowered under him. "I will find out now—you must tell me, dear." She, in her place, refused him any help With the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, Blind creature; and a while he didn't see. But at last he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."
"What is it—what?" she said. "Just that I see."
"You don't," she challenged. "Tell me what it is."
"The wonder is I didn't see at once. I never noticed it from here before. I must be wonted to it—-that's the reason. The little graveyard where my people are! So small the window frames the whole of it. Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it? There are three stones of slate and one of marble, Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those. But I understand: it is not the stones, But the child's mound----"
Don't, don't, don't, don't," she cried.
She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs; And turned on him with such a daunting look, He said twice over before he knew himself: "Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?"
"Not you! Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it! I must get out of here. I must get air. I don't know rightly whether any man can."
"Amy! Don't go to someone else this time. Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs." He sat and fixed his chin between his fists. "There's something I should like to ask you, dear."
"You don't know how to ask it."
"Help me, then."
Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
"My words are nearly always an offence. I don't know how to speak of anything So as to please you. But I might be taught I should suppose. I can't say I see how. A man must partly give up being a man With women-folk. We could have some arrangement By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off Anything special you're a-mind to name. Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love. Two that don't love can't live together without them. But two that do can't live together with them." She moved the latch a little. "Don't—-don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much Unlike other folks as your standing there Apart would make me out. Give me my chance. I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think it the thing To take your mother-loss of a first child So inconsolably—in the face of love. You'd think his memory might be satisfied----"
"There you go sneering now!"
"I'm not, I'm not! You make me angry. I'll come down to you. God, what a woman! And it's come to this, A man can't speak of his own child that's dead." "You can't because you don't know how. If you had any feelings, you that dug With your own hand—-how could you?—-his little grave; I saw you from that very window there, Making the gravel leap and leap in air, Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly And roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs To look again, and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall Outside there in the entry, for I saw it."
"I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed." "I can repeat the very words you were saying.
'Three foggy mornings and one rainy day Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.' Think of it, talk like that at such a time! What had how long it takes a birch to rot To do with what was in the darkened parlour? You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretence of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand. But the world's evil. I won't have grief so If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!"
"There, you have said it all and you feel better. You won't go now. You're crying. Close the door. The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up? Amy! There's someone coming down the road!"
"_You_-—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—- Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you----"
"If—-you—-do!" She was opening the door wider. "Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. I'll follow and bring you back by force. I _will!_—-"
The Death of the Hired Man
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 doorway with the news And put him on his guard. "Silas is back."
She pushed him outward with her through the door And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said. She took the market things from Warren's arms And set them on the porch, then drew him down To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
"When was I ever anything but kind to him? But I'll not have the fellow back," he said. "I told him so last haying, didn't I? 'If he left then,' I said, 'that ended it.' What good is he? Who else will harbour him At his age for the little he can do? What help he is there's no depending on. Off he goes always when I need him most.
'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay, Enough at least to buy tobacco with, So he won't have to beg and be beholden.' 'All right,' I say, 'I can't afford to pay Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.' 'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will have to.' I shouldn't mind his bettering himself If that was what it was. You can be certain, When he begins like that, there's someone at him Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—- In haying time, when any help is scarce. In winter he comes back to us. I'm done."
"Sh! not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said.
"I want him to: he'll have to soon or late."
"He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove. When I came up from Rowe's I found him here, Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep, A miserable sight, and frightening, too—- You needn't smile—-I didn't recognise him—- I wasn't looking for him—-and he's changed. Wait till you see."
"Where did you say he'd been?"
"He didn't say. I dragged him to the house, And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke. I tried to make him talk about his travels. Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off."
"What did he say? Did he say anything?"
"But little."
"Anything? Mary, confess He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me."
"Warren!"
"But did he? I just want to know."
"Of course he did. What would you have him say? Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save his self-respect. He added, if you really care to know, He meant to clear the upper pasture, too. That sounds like something you have heard before? Warren, I wish you could have heard the way He jumbled everything. I stopped to look Two or three times—-he made me feel so queer—- To see if he was talking in his sleep. He ran on Harold Wilson—-you remember—- The boy you had in haying four years since. He's finished school, and teaching in his college. Silas declares you'll have to get him back. He says they two will make a team for work: Between them they will lay this farm as smooth! The way he mixed that in with other things. He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft On education—-you know how they fought All through July under the blazing sun, Silas up on the cart to build the load, Harold along beside to pitch it on."
"Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot."
"Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream. You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger! Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him. After so many years he still keeps finding Good arguments he sees he might have used. I sympathise. I know just how it feels To think of the right thing to say too late. Harold's associated in his mind with Latin. He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying He studied Latin like the violin Because he liked it—-that an argument! He said he couldn't make the boy believe He could find water with a hazel prong—- Which showed how much good school had ever done him. He wanted to go over that. But most of all He thinks if he could have another chance To teach him how to build a load of hay----"
"I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment. He bundles every forkful in its place, And tags and numbers it for future reference, So he can find and easily dislodge it In the unloading. Silas does that well. He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests. You never see him standing on the hay He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself."
"He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be Some good perhaps to someone in the world. He hates to see a boy the fool of books. Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk, And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope, So now and never any different."
Part of a moon was falling down the west, Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills. Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, As if she played unheard the tenderness That wrought on him beside her in the night. "Warren," she said, "he has come home to die: You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time."
"Home," he mocked gently.
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