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Title: Mountain Interval

Author: Robert Frost

Release date: July 7, 2009 [eBook #29345]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Starner, Katherine Ward and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOUNTAIN INTERVAL ***




Produced by David Starner, Katherine Ward and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





  [Illustration: ROBERT FROST
  From the original in plaster by AROLDO DU CHÊNE
  _Copyright, Henry Holt and Company_]




  MOUNTAIN INTERVAL


  BY
  ROBERT FROST


  NEW YORK
  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1921
  BY
  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

  _May, 1931_

  PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
  THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
  RAHWAY, N. J.

       *       *       *       *       *


  TO YOU
  WHO LEAST NEED REMINDING

  that before this interval of the South Branch under black
  mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth,
  where we walked in spring beyond the covered bridge; but that
  the first interval of all was the old farm, our brook interval,
  so called by the man we had it from in sale.




CONTENTS

                                                                  PAGE
  THE ROAD NOT TAKEN                                                 9
  CHRISTMAS TREES                                                   11
  AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT                                         14
  A PATCH OF OLD SNOW                                               15
  IN THE HOME STRETCH                                               16
  THE TELEPHONE                                                     24
  MEETING AND PASSING                                               25
  HYLA BROOK                                                        26
  THE OVEN BIRD                                                     27
  BOND AND FREE                                                     28
  BIRCHES                                                           29
  PEA BRUSH                                                         31
  PUTTING IN THE SEED                                               32
  A TIME TO TALK                                                    33
  THE COW IN APPLE TIME                                             34
  AN ENCOUNTER                                                      35
  RANGE-FINDING                                                     36
  THE HILL WIFE                                                     37
        I LONELINESS--HER WORD                                      37
       II HOUSE FEAR                                                37
      III THE SMILE--HER WORD                                       38
       IV THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM                                    38
        V THE IMPULSE                                               39
  THE BONFIRE                                                       41
  A GIRL'S GARDEN                                                   45
  THE EXPOSED NEST                                                  48
  "OUT, OUT--"                                                      50
  BROWN'S DESCENT OR THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE                          52
  THE GUM-GATHERER                                                  56
  THE LINE-GANG                                                     58
  THE VANISHING RED                                                 59
  SNOW                                                              61
  THE SOUND OF THE TREES                                            75




_THE ROAD NOT TAKEN_


  _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
  To where it bent in the undergrowth;_

  _Then took the other, as just as fair,
  And having perhaps the better claim,
  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
  Though as for that the passing there
  Had worn them really about the same,_

  _And both that morning equally lay
  In leaves no step had trodden black.
  Oh, I kept the first for another day!
  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
  I doubted if I should ever come back._

  _I shall be telling this with a sigh
  Somewhere ages and ages hence:
  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
  I took the one less traveled by,
  And that has made all the difference._




CHRISTMAS TREES

(_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 of foliage not yet laid, there drove
  A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
  Yet did in country fashion in that there
  He sat and waited till he drew us out
  A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
  He proved to be the city come again
  To look for something it had left behind
  And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
  He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
  My woods--the young fir balsams like a place
  Where houses all are churches and have spires.
  I hadn't thought of them as Christmas Trees.
  I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
  To sell them off their feet to go in cars
  And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
  Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
  I'd hate to have them know it if I was.
  Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except
  As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
  Beyond the time of profitable growth,
  The trial by market everything must come to.
  I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
  Then whether from mistaken courtesy
  And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
  From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
  I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while."
  "I could soon tell how many they would cut,
  You let me look them over."

                                     "You could look.
  But don't expect I'm going to let you have them."
  Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
  That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
  Quite solitary and having equal boughs
  All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to,
  Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
  With a buyer's moderation, "That would do."
  I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.
  We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
  And came down on the north.

                               He said, "A thousand."

  "A thousand Christmas trees!--at what apiece?"

  He felt some need of softening that to me:
  "A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars."

  Then I was certain I had never meant
  To let him have them. Never show surprise!
  But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
  The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
  (For that was all they figured out apiece),
  Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
  I should be writing to within the hour
  Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
  Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
  Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
  A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!
  Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
  As may be shown by a simple calculation.
  Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.
  I can't help wishing I could send you one,
  In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.




AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT


  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 giving back the gaze
  Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
  What kept him from remembering what it was
  That brought him to that creaking room was age.
  He stood with barrels round him--at a loss.
  And having scared the cellar under him
  In clomping there, he scared it once again
  In clomping off;--and scared the outer night,
  Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
  Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
  But nothing so like beating on a box.
  A light he was to no one but himself
  Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
  A quiet light, and then not even that.
  He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
  So late-arising, to the broken moon
  As better than the sun in any case
  For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
  His icicles along the wall to keep;
  And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
  Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
  And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
  One aged man--one man--can't fill a house,
  A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
  It's thus he does it of a winter night.




A PATCH OF OLD SNOW


  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 if
    Small print overspread it,
  The news of a day I've forgotten--
    If I ever read it.




IN THE HOME STRETCH


  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 hat was in her hand.
  Behind her was confusion in the room,
  Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
  In other chairs, and something, come to look,
  For every room a house has--parlor, bed-room,
  And dining-room--thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.
  And now and then a smudged, infernal face
  Looked in a door behind her and addressed
  Her back. She always answered without turning.

  "Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?"
  "Put it on top of something that's on top
  Of something else," she laughed. "Oh, put it where
  You can to-night, and go. It's almost dark;
  You must be getting started back to town."
  Another blackened face thrust in and looked
  And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently,
  "What are you seeing out the window, _lady_?"

  "Never was I beladied so before.
  Would evidence of having been called lady
  More than so many times make me a lady
  In common law, I wonder."

                                                 "But I ask,
  What are you seeing out the window, lady?"

  "What I'll be seeing more of in the years
  To come as here I stand and go the round
  Of many plates with towels many times."

  "And what is that? You only put me off."

  "Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan
  More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;
  A little stretch of mowing-field for you;
  Not much of that until I come to woods
  That end all. And it's scarce enough to call
  A view."

                      "And yet you think you like it, dear?"

  "That's what you're so concerned to know! You hope
  I like it. Bang goes something big away
  Off there upstairs. The very tread of men
  As great as those is shattering to the frame
  Of such a little house. Once left alone,
  You and I, dear, will go with softer steps
  Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none
  But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands
  Will ever slam the doors."

                                            "I think you see
  More than you like to own to out that window."

  "No; for besides the things I tell you of,
  I only see the years. They come and go
  In alternation with the weeds, the field,
  The wood."

                    "What kind of years?"
                                        "Why, latter years--
  Different from early years."
                                           "I see them, too.
  You didn't count them?"
                                        "No, the further off
  So ran together that I didn't try to.
  It can scarce be that they would be in number
  We'd care to know, for we are not young now.
  And bang goes something else away off there.
  It sounds as if it were the men went down,
  And every crash meant one less to return
  To lighted city streets we, too, have known,
  But now are giving up for country darkness."

  "Come from that window where you see too much for me,
  And take a livelier view of things from here.
  They're going. Watch this husky swarming up
  Over the wheel into the sky-high seat,
  Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose
  At the flame burning downward as he sucks it."

  "See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof
  How dark it's getting. Can you tell what time
  It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!
  What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.
  A wire she is of silver, as new as we
  To everything. Her light won't last us long.
  It's something, though, to know we're going to have her
  Night after night and stronger every night
  To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,
  The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;
  Ask them to help you get it on its feet.
  We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!"

  "They're not gone yet."

                               "We've got to have the stove,
  Whatever else we want for. And a light.
  Have we a piece of candle if the lamp
  And oil are buried out of reach?"
                                                       Again
  The house was full of tramping, and the dark,
  Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.
  A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,
  To which they set it true by eye; and then
  Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,
  So much too light and airy for their strength
  It almost seemed to come ballooning up,
  Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.
  "A fit!" said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder.
  "It's good luck when you move in to begin
  With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,
  It's not so bad in the country, settled down,
  When people're getting on in life. You'll like it."
  Joe said: "You big boys ought to find a farm,
  And make good farmers, and leave other fellows
  The city work to do. There's not enough
  For everybody as it is in there."
  "God!" one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:
  "Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm."
  But Jimmy only made his jaw recede
  Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say
  He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy
  Who said with seriousness that made them laugh,
  "Ma friend, you ain't know what it is you're ask."
  He doffed his cap and held it with both hands
  Across his chest to make as 'twere a bow:
  "We're giving you our chances on de farm."
  And then they all turned to with deafening boots
  And put each other bodily out of the house.
  "Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think--
  I don't know what they think we see in what
  They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems
  The back some farm presents us; and your woods
  To northward from your window at the sink,
  Waiting to steal a step on us whenever
  We drop our eyes or turn to other things,
  As in the game 'Ten-step' the children play."

  "Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.
  All they could say was 'God!' when you proposed
  Their coming out and making useful farmers."

  "Did they make something lonesome go through you?
  It would take more than them to sicken you--
  Us of our bargain. But they left us so
  As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.
  They almost shook _me_."

                                           "It's all so much
  What we have always wanted, I confess
  It's seeming bad for a moment makes it seem
  Even worse still, and so on down, down, down.
  It's nothing; it's their leaving us at dusk.
  I never bore it well when people went.
  The first night after guests have gone, the house
  Seems haunted or exposed. I always take
  A personal interest in the locking up
  At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off."
  He fetched a dingy lantern from behind
  A door. "There's that we didn't lose! And these!"--
  Some matches he unpocketed. "For food--
  The meals we've had no one can take from us.
  I wish that everything on earth were just
  As certain as the meals we've had. I wish
  The meals we haven't had were, anyway.
  What have you you know where to lay your hands on?"

  "The bread we bought in passing at the store.
  There's butter somewhere, too."

                                      "Let's rend the bread.
  I'll light the fire for company for you;
  You'll not have any other company
  Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday
  To look us over and give us his idea
  Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.
  He'll know what he would do if he were we,
  And all at once. He'll plan for us and plan
  To help us, but he'll take it out in planning.
  Well, you can set the table with the loaf.
  Let's see you find your loaf. I'll light the fire.
  I like chairs occupying other chairs
  Not offering a lady--"

                                          "There again, Joe!
  _You're tired._"

                           "I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out;
  Don't mind a word I say. It's a day's work
  To empty one house of all household goods
  And fill another with 'em fifteen miles away,
  Although you do no more than dump them down."

  "Dumped down in paradise we are and happy."

  "It's all so much what I have always wanted,
  I can't believe it's what you wanted, too."

  "Shouldn't you like to know?"

                                           "I'd like to know
  If it is what you wanted, then how much
  You wanted it for me."

                                     "A troubled conscience!
  You don't want me to tell if _I_ don't know."

  "I don't want to find out what can't be known.

  But who first said the word to come?"

                                                   "My dear,
  It's who first thought the thought. You're searching, Joe,
  For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings.
  Ends and beginnings--there are no such things.
  There are only middles."

                            "What is this?"
                                                 "This life?
  Our sitting here by lantern-light together
  Amid the wreckage of a former home?
  You won't deny the lantern isn't new.
  The stove is not, and you are not to me,
  Nor I to you."

                                   "Perhaps you never were?"

  "It would take me forever to recite
  All that's not new in where we find ourselves.
  New is a word for fools in towns who think
  Style upon style in dress and thought at last
  Must get somewhere. I've heard you say as much.
  No, this is no beginning."

                                              "Then an end?"
  "End is a gloomy word."

                                             "Is it too late
  To drag you out for just a good-night call
  On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope
  By starlight in the grass for a last peach
  The neighbors may not have taken as their right
  When the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking:
  I doubt if they have left us many grapes.
  Before we set ourselves to right the house,
  The first thing in the morning, out we go
  To go the round of apple, cherry, peach,
  Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.
  All of a farm it is."

                                          "I know this much:
  I'm going to put you in your bed, if first
  I have to make you build it. Come, the light."

  When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
  The fire got out through crannies in the stove
  And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
  As much at home as if they'd always danced there.




THE TELEPHONE


  "When I was just as far as I could walk
  From here to-day,
  There was an hour
  All still
  When leaning with my head against a flower
  I heard you talk.
  Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
  You spoke from that flower on the window sill--
  Do you remember what it was you said?"

  "First tell me what it was you thought you heard."

  "Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
  I leaned my head,
  And holding by the stalk,
  I listened and I thought I caught the word--
  What was it? Did you call me by my name?
  Or did you say--
  _Someone_ said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."

  "I may have thought as much, but not aloud."

  "Well, so I came."




MEETING AND PASSING


  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
  As you came up the hill. We met. But all
  We did that day was mingle great and small
  Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
  The figure of our being less than two
  But more than one as yet. Your parasol

  Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
  And all the time we talked you seemed to see
  Something down there to smile at in the dust.
  (Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
  Afterward I went past what you had passed
  Before we met and you what I had passed.




HYLA BROOK


  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 the Hyla breed
  That shouted in the mist a month ago,
  Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
  Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
  Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
  Even against the way its waters went.
  Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
  Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--
  A brook to none but who remember long.
  This as it will be seen is other far
  Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
  We love the things we love for what they are.




THE OVEN BIRD


  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 for flowers
  Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
  He says the early petal-fall is past
  When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
  On sunny days a moment overcast;
  And comes that other fall we name the fall.
  He says the highway dust is over all.
  The bird would cease and be as other birds
  But that he knows in singing not to sing.
  The question that he frames in all but words
  Is what to make of a diminished thing.




BOND AND FREE


  Love has earth to which she clings
  With hills and circling arms about--
  Wall within wall to shut fear out.
  But Thought has need of no such things,
  For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

  On snow and sand and turf, I see
  Where Love has left a printed trace
  With straining in the world's embrace.
  And such is Love and glad to be.
  But Thought has shaken his ankles free.

  Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
  And sits in Sirius' disc all night,
  Till day makes him retrace his flight,
  With smell of burning on every plume,
  Back past the sun to an earthly room.

  His gains in heaven are what they are.
  Yet some say Love by being thrall
  And simply staying possesses all
  In several beauty that Thought fares far
  To find fused in another star.




BIRCHES


  When I see birches bend to left and right
  Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
  I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
  But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
  Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
  Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
  After a rain. They click upon themselves
  As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
  As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
  Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
  Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
  Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
  You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
  They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
  And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
  So low for long, they never right themselves:
  You may see their trunks arching in the woods
  Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
  Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
  Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
  But I was going to say when Truth broke in
  With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
  (Now am I free to be poetical?)
  I should prefer to have some boy bend them
  As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
  Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
  Whose only play was what he found himself,
  Summer or winter, and could play alone.
  One by one he subdued his father's trees
  By riding them down over and over again
  Until he took the stiffness out of them,
  And not one but hung limp, not one was left
  For him to conquer. He learned all there was
  To learn about not launching out too soon
  And so not carrying the tree away
  Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
  To the top branches, climbing carefully
  With the same pains you use to fill a cup
  Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
  Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
  Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
  So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
  And so I dream of going back to be.
  It's when I'm weary of considerations,
  And life is too much like a pathless wood
  Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
  Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
  From a twig's having lashed across it open.
  I'd like to get away from earth awhile
  And then come back to it and begin over.
  May no fate willfully misunderstand me
  And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
  Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
  I don't know where it's likely to go better.
  I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
  And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
  _Toward_ heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
  But dipped its top and set me down again.
  That would be good both going and coming back.
  One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.




PEA BRUSH


  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 my peas.

  The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
    Was hot enough for the first of May,
  And stifling hot with the odor of sap
    From stumps still bleeding their life away.

  The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
    Wherever the ground was low and wet,
  The minute they heard my step went still
    To watch me and see what I came to get.

  Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!--
    All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
  Time someone came with cart and pair
    And got them off the wild flower's backs.

  They might be good for garden things
    To curl a little finger round,
  The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings,
    And lift themselves up off the ground.

  Small good to anything growing wild,
    They were crooking many a trillium
  That had budded before the boughs were piled
    And since it was coming up had to come.




PUTTING IN THE SEED


  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 apple tree.
  (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
  Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
  And go along with you ere you lose sight
  Of what you came for and become like me,
  Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
  How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
  On through the watching for that early birth
  When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

  The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
  Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.




A TIME TO TALK


  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 hoed,
  And shout from where I am, What is it?
  No, not as there is a time to talk.
  I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
  Blade-end up and five feet tall,
  And plod: I go up to the stone wall
  For a friendly visit.




THE COW IN APPLE TIME


  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 with pomace and she drools
  A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
  She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
  She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
  The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
  She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
  She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
  Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.




AN ENCOUNTER


  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, half climbing through
  A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar
  And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,
  And sorry I ever left the road I knew,
  I paused and rested on a sort of hook
  That had me by the coat as good as seated,
  And since there was no other way to look,
  Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,
  Stood over me a resurrected tree,
  A tree that had been down and raised again--
  A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
  As if for fear of treading upon me.
  I saw the strange position of his hands--
  Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
  Of wire with something in it from men to men.
  "You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays
  And what's the news you carry--if you know?
  And tell me where you're off for--Montreal?
  Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all.
  Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
  Half looking for the orchid Calypso."




RANGE-FINDING


  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.
  And still the bird revisited her young.
  A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
  A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
  Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

  On the bare upland pasture there had spread
  O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
  And straining cables wet with silver dew.
  A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
  The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
  But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.




THE HILL WIFE


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;

  Or care so much when they come back
    With whatever it is they sing;
  The truth being we are as much
    Too glad for the one thing

  As we are too sad for the other here--
    With birds that fill their breasts
  But with each other and themselves
    And their built or driven nests.


HOUSE FEAR

  Always--I tell you this they learned--
  Always at night when they returned
  To the lonely house from far away
  To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
  They learned to rattle the lock and key
  To give whatever might chance to be
  Warning and time to be off in flight:
  And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
  They learned to leave the house-door wide
  Until they had lit the lamp inside.


THE SMILE

(_Her Word_)

  I didn't like the way he went away.
  That smile! It never came of being gay.
  Still he smiled--did you see him?--I was sure!
  Perhaps because we gave him only bread
  And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.
  Perhaps because he let us give instead
  Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
  Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
  Or being very young (and he was pleased
  To have a vision of us old and dead).
  I wonder how far down the road he's got.
  He's watching from the woods as like as not.


THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

  She had no saying dark enough
    For the dark pine that kept
  Forever trying the window-latch
    Of the room where they slept.

  The tireless but ineffectual hands
    That with every futile pass
  Made the great tree seem as a little bird
    Before the mystery of glass!

  It never had been inside the room,
    And only one of the two
  Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
    Of what the tree might do.


THE IMPULSE

  It was too lonely for her there,
    And too wild,
  And since there were but two of them,
    And no child,

  And work was little in the house,
    She was free,
  And followed where he furrowed field,
    Or felled tree.

  She rested on a log and tossed
    The fresh chips,
  With a song only to herself
    On her lips.

  And once she went to break a bough
    Of black alder.
  She strayed so far she scarcely heard
    When he called her--

  And didn't answer--didn't speak--
    Or return.
  She stood, and then she ran and hid
    In the fern.

  He never found her, though he looked
    Everywhere,
  And he asked at her mother's house
    Was she there.

  Sudden and swift and light as that
    The ties gave,
  And he learned of finalities
    Besides the grave.




THE BONFIRE


  "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 wait for rain or snow.
  Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe.
  The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough
  Down dark converging paths between the pines.
  Let's not care what we do with it to-night.
  Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile
  The way we piled it. And let's be the talk
  Of people brought to windows by a light
  Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper.
  Rouse them all, both the free and not so free
  With saying what they'd like to do to us
  For what they'd better wait till we have done.
  Let's all but bring to life this old volcano,
  If that is what the mountain ever was--
  And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will...."

  "And scare you too?" the children said together.

  "Why wouldn't it scare me to have a fire
  Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know
  That still, if I repent, I may recall it,
  But in a moment not: a little spurt
  Of burning fatness, and then nothing but
  The fire itself can put it out, and that
  By burning out, and before it burns out
  It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars,
  And sweeping round it with a flaming sword,
  Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle--
  Done so much and I know not how much more
  I mean it shall not do if I can bind it.
  Well if it doesn't with its draft bring on
  A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter,
  As once it did with me upon an April.
  The breezes were so spent with winter blowing
  They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them
  Short of the perch their languid flight was toward;
  And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven
  As I walked once round it in possession.
  But the wind out of doors--you know the saying.
  There came a gust. You used to think the trees
  Made wind by fanning since you never knew
  It blow but that you saw the trees in motion.
  Something or someone watching made that gust.
  It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass
  Of over-winter with the least tip-touch
  Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand.
  The place it reached to blackened instantly.
  The black was all there was by day-light,
  That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke--
  And a flame slender as the hepaticas,
  Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now.
  But the black spread like black death on the ground,
  And I think the sky darkened with a cloud
  Like winter and evening coming on together.
  There were enough things to be thought of then.
  Where the field stretches toward the north
  And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it
  To flames without twice thinking, where it verges
  Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear
  They might find fuel there, in withered brake,
  Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod,
  And alder and grape vine entanglement,
  To leap the dusty deadline. For my own
  I took what front there was beside. I knelt
  And thrust hands in and held my face away.
  Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating.
  A board is the best weapon if you have it.
  I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew,
  And said out loud, I couldn't bide the smother
  And heat so close in; but the thought of all
  The woods and town on fire by me, and all
  The town turned out to fight for me--that held me.
  I trusted the brook barrier, but feared
  The road would fail; and on that side the fire
  Died not without a noise of crackling wood--
  Of something more than tinder-grass and weed--
  That brought me to my feet to hold it back
  By leaning back myself, as if the reins
  Were round my neck and I was at the plough.
  I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread
  Another color over a tenth the space
  That I spread coal-black over in the time
  It took me. Neighbors coming home from town
  Couldn't believe that so much black had come there
  While they had backs turned, that it hadn't been there
  When they had passed an hour or so before
  Going the other way and they not seen it.
  They looked about for someone to have done it.
  But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering
  Where all my weariness had gone and why
  I walked so light on air in heavy shoes
  In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling.
  Why wouldn't I be scared remembering that?"

  "If it scares you, what will it do to us?"

  "Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared,
  What would you say to war if it should come?
  That's what for reasons I should like to know--
  If you can comfort me by any answer."

  "Oh, but war's not for children--it's for men."

  "Now we are digging almost down to China.
  My dears, my dears, you thought that--we all thought it.
  So your mistake was ours. Haven't you heard, though,
  About the ships where war has found them out
  At sea, about the towns where war has come
  Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
  Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels,--
  And children in the ships and in the towns?
  Haven't you heard what we have lived to learn?
  Nothing so new--something we had forgotten:
  _War is for everyone, for children too_.
  I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't.
  The best way is to come up hill with me
  And have our fire and laugh and be afraid."




A GIRL'S GARDEN


  A neighbor of mine in the village
    Likes to tell how one spring
  When she was a girl on the farm, she did
    A childlike thing.

  One day she asked her father
    To give her a garden plot
  To plant and tend and reap herself,
    And he said, "Why not?"

  In casting about for a corner
    He thought of an idle bit
  Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
    And he said, "Just it."

  And he said, "That ought to make you
    An ideal one-girl farm,
  And give you a chance to put some strength
    On your slim-jim arm."

  It was not enough of a garden,
    Her father said, to plough;
  So she had to work it all by hand,
    But she don't mind now.

  She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
    Along a stretch of road;
  But she always ran away and left
    Her not-nice load.

  And hid from anyone passing.
    And then she begged the seed.
  She says she thinks she planted one
    Of all things but weed.

  A hill each of potatoes,
    Radishes, lettuce, peas,
  Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
    And even fruit trees.

  And yes, she has long mistrusted
    That a cider apple tree
  In bearing there to-day is hers,
    Or at least may be.

  Her crop was a miscellany
    When all was said and done,
  A little bit of everything,
    A great deal of none.

  _Now_ when she sees in the village
    How village things go,
  Just when it seems to come in right,
    She says, "_I_ know!

  It's as when I was a farmer----"
    Oh, never by way of advice!
  And she never sins by telling the tale
    To the same person twice.




THE EXPOSED NEST


  You were forever finding some new play.
  So when I saw you down on hands and knees
  In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
  Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
  I went to show you how to make it stay,
  If that was your idea, against the breeze,
  And, if you asked me, even help pretend
  To make it root again and grow afresh.
  But 'twas no make-believe with you to-day,
  Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
  Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
  Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
  'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
  The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
  (Miraculously without tasting flesh)
  And left defenseless to the heat and light.
  You wanted to restore them to their right
  Of something interposed between their sight
  And too much world at once--could means be found.
  The way the nest-full every time we stirred
  Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
  Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
  Made me ask would the mother-bird return
  And care for them in such a change of scene
  And might our meddling make her more afraid.
  That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
  We saw the risk we took in doing good,
  But dared not spare to do the best we could
  Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
  You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
  All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
  No more to tell? We turned to other things.
  I haven't any memory--have you?--
  Of ever coming to the place again
  To see if the birds lived the first night through,
  And so at last to learn to use their wings.




"OUT, OUT--"


  The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
  And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
  Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
  And from there those that lifted eyes could count
  Five mountain ranges one behind the other
  Under the sunset far into Vermont.
  And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
  As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
  And nothing happened: day was all but done.
  Call it a day, I wish they might have said
  To please the boy by giving him the half hour
  That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
  His sister stood beside them in her apron
  To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
  As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
  Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--
  He must have given the hand. However it was,
  Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
  The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
  As he swung toward them holding up the hand
  Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
  The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
  Since he was old enough to know, big boy
  Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
  He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off--
  The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
  So. But the hand was gone already.
  The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
  He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
  And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.
  No one believed. They listened at his heart.
  Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.
  No more to build on there. And they, since they
  Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.




BROWN'S DESCENT

OR

THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE


  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 him make
    His wild descent from there one night,
  'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything,
    Describing rings of lantern light.

  Between the house and barn the gale
    Got him by something he had on
  And blew him out on the icy crust
    That cased the world, and he was gone!

  Walls were all buried, trees were few:
    He saw no stay unless he stove
  A hole in somewhere with his heel.
    But though repeatedly he strove

  And stamped and said things to himself,
    And sometimes something seemed to yield,
  He gained no foothold, but pursued
    His journey down from field to field.

  Sometimes he came with arms outspread
    Like wings, revolving in the scene
  Upon his longer axis, and
    With no small dignity of mien.

  Faster or slower as he chanced,
    Sitting or standing as he chose,
  According as he feared to risk
    His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,

  He never let the lantern drop.
    And some exclaimed who saw afar
  The figures he described with it,
    "I wonder what those signals are

  Brown makes at such an hour of night!
    He's celebrating something strange.
  I wonder if he's sold his farm,
    Or been made Master of the Grange."

  He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;
    He fell and made the lantern rattle
  (But saved the light from going out.)
    So half-way down he fought the battle

  Incredulous of his own bad luck.
    And then becoming reconciled
  To everything, he gave it up
    And came down like a coasting child.

  "Well--I--be--" that was all he said,
    As standing in the river road,
  He looked back up the slippery slope
    (Two miles it was) to his abode.

  Sometimes as an authority
    On motor-cars, I'm asked if I
  Should say our stock was petered out,
    And this is my sincere reply:

  Yankees are what they always were.
    Don't think Brown ever gave up hope
  Of getting home again because
    He couldn't climb that slippery slope;

  Or even thought of standing there
    Until the January thaw
  Should take the polish off the crust.
    He bowed with grace to natural law,

  And then went round it on his feet,
    After the manner of our stock;
  Not much concerned for those to whom,
    At that particular time o'clock,

  It must have looked as if the course
    He steered was really straight away
  From that which he was headed for--
    Not much concerned for them, I say;

  No more so than became a man--
    _And_ politician at odd seasons.
  I've kept Brown standing in the cold
    While I invested him with reasons;

  But now he snapped his eyes three times;
    Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's
  'Bout out!" and took the long way home
    By road, a matter of several miles.




THE GUM-GATHERER


  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 with a swinging bag for load
  And half the bag wound round his hand.
  We talked like barking above the din
  Of water we walked along beside.
  And for my telling him where I'd been
  And where I lived in mountain land
  To be coming home the way I was,
  He told me a little about himself.
  He came from higher up in the pass
  Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks
  Is blocks split off the mountain mass--
  And hopeless grist enough it looks
  Ever to grind to soil for grass.
  (The way it is will do for moss.)
  There he had built his stolen shack.
  It had to be a stolen shack
  Because of the fears of fire and loss
  That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:
  Visions of half the world burned black
  And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.
  We know who when they come to town
  Bring berries under the wagon seat,
  Or a basket of eggs between their feet;
  What this man brought in a cotton sack
  Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce.
  He showed me lumps of the scented stuff
  Like uncut jewels, dull and rough.
  It comes to market golden brown;
  But turns to pink between the teeth.

  I told him this is a pleasant life
  To set your breast to the bark of trees
  That all your days are dim beneath,
  And reaching up with a little knife,
  To loose the resin and take it down
  And bring it to market when you please.




THE LINE-GANG


  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 thread.
  They string an instrument against the sky
  Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken
  Will run as hushed as when they were a thought.
  But in no hush they string it: they go past
  With shouts afar to pull the cable taut,
  To hold it hard until they make it fast,
  To ease away--they have it. With a laugh,
  An oath of towns that set the wild at naught
  They bring the telephone and telegraph.




THE VANISHING RED


  He is said to have been the last Red Man
  In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
  If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
  But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
  For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
  "Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
  Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
  When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with."
  You can't get back and see it as he saw it.
  It's too long a story to go into now.
  You'd have to have been there and lived it.
  Then you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter
  Of who began it between the two races.

  Some guttural exclamation of surprise
  The Red Man gave in poking about the mill
  Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone
  Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
  From one who had no right to be heard from.
  "Come, John," he said, "you want to see the wheel pit?"

  He took him down below a cramping rafter,
  And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
  The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
  Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
  Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
  That jangled even above the general noise,
  And came up stairs alone--and gave that laugh,
  And said something to a man with a meal-sack
  That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch--then.
  Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel pit all right.




SNOW


  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 hours of sleep,
  Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.

  Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward
  Over his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying,
  "You can just see it glancing off the roof
  Making a great scroll upward toward the sky,
  Long enough for recording all our names on.--
  I think I'll just call up my wife and tell her
  I'm here--so far--and starting on again.
  I'll call her softly so that if she's wise
  And gone to sleep, she needn't wake to answer."
  Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened.
  "Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I'm at Cole's. I'm late.
  I called you up to say Good-night from here
  Before I went to say Good-morning there.--
  I thought I would.--I know, but, Lett--I know--
  I could, but what's the sense? The rest won't be
  So bad.--Give me an hour for it.--Ho, ho,
  Three hours to here! But that was all up hill;
  The rest is down.--Why no, no, not a wallow:
  They kept their heads and took their time to it
  Like darlings, both of them. They're in the barn.--
  My dear, I'm coming just the same. I didn't
  Call you to ask you to invite me home.--"
  He lingered for some word she wouldn't say,
  Said it at last himself, "Good-night," and then,
  Getting no answer, closed the telephone.
  The three stood in the lamplight round the table
  With lowered eyes a moment till he said,
  "I'll just see how the horses are."

                                                    "Yes, do,"
  Both the Coles said together. Mrs. Cole
  Added: "You can judge better after seeing.--
  I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,
  Brother Meserve. You know to find your way
  Out through the shed."

                                       "I guess I know my way,
  I guess I know where I can find my name
  Carved in the shed to tell me who I am
  If it don't tell me where I am. I used
  To play--"

                          "You tend your horses and come back.
  Fred Cole, you're going to let him!"

                                            "Well, aren't you?
  How can you help yourself?"

                                        "I called him Brother.
  Why did I call him that?"

                                           "It's right enough.
  That's all you ever heard him called round here.
  He seems to have lost off his Christian name."

  "Christian enough I should call that myself.
  He took no notice, did he? Well, at least
  I didn't use it out of love of him,
  The dear knows. I detest the thought of him
  With his ten children under ten years old.
  I hate his wretched little Racker Sect,
  All's ever I heard of it, which isn't much.
  But that's not saying--Look, Fred Cole, it's twelve,
  Isn't it, now? He's been here half an hour.
  He says he left the village store at nine.
  Three hours to do four miles--a mile an hour
  Or not much better. Why, it doesn't seem
  As if a man could move that slow and move.
  Try to think what he did with all that time.
  And three miles more to go!"

                                            "Don't let him go.
  Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.
  That sort of man talks straight on all his life
  From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf
  To anything anyone else may say.
  I should have thought, though, you could make him hear you."

  "What is he doing out a night like this?
  Why can't he stay at home?"

                                           "He had to preach."

  "It's no night to be out."

                                             "He may be small,
  He may be good, but one thing's sure, he's tough."

  "And strong of stale tobacco."

                                         "He'll pull through."

  "You only say so. Not another house
  Or shelter to put into from this place
  To theirs. I'm going to call his wife again."

  "Wait and he may. Let's see what he will do.
  Let's see if he will think of her again.
  But then I doubt he's thinking of himself
  He doesn't look on it as anything."

  "He shan't go--there!"

                                   "It _is_ a night, my dear."

  "One thing: he didn't drag God into it."

  "He don't consider it a case for God."

  "You think so, do you? You don't know the kind.
  He's getting up a miracle this minute.
  Privately--to himself, right now, he's thinking
  He'll make a case of it if he succeeds,
  But keep still if he fails."

                                         "Keep still all over.
  He'll be dead--dead and buried."

                                              "Such a trouble!
  Not but I've every reason not to care
  What happens to him if it only takes
  Some of the sanctimonious conceit
  Out of one of those pious scalawags."

  "Nonsense to that! You want to see him safe."

  "You like the runt."

                                         "Don't you a little?"

                                                        "Well,
  I don't like what he's doing, which is what
  You like, and like him for."

                                              "Oh, yes you do.
  You like your fun as well as anyone;
  Only you women have to put these airs on
  To impress men. You've got us so ashamed
  Of being men we can't look at a good fight
  Between two boys and not feel bound to stop it.
  Let the man freeze an ear or two, I say.--
  He's here. I leave him all to you. Go in
  And save his life.--All right, come in, Meserve.
  Sit down, sit down. How did you find the horses?"

  "Fine, fine."

                        "And ready for some more? My wife here
  Says it won't do. You've got to give it up."

  "Won't you to please me? Please! If I say please?
  Mr. Meserve, I'll leave it to _your_ wife.
  What _did_ your wife say on the telephone?"

  Meserve seemed to heed nothing but the lamp
  Or something not far from it on the table.
  By straightening out and lifting a forefinger,
  He pointed with his hand from where it lay
  Like a white crumpled spider on his knee:
  "That leaf there in your open book! It moved
  Just then, I thought. It's stood erect like that,
  There on the table, ever since I came,
  Trying to turn itself backward or forward,
  I've had my eye on it to make out which;
  If forward, then it's with a friend's impatience--
  You see I know--to get you on to things
  It wants to see how you will take, if backward
  It's from regret for something you have passed
  And failed to see the good of. Never mind,
  Things must expect to come in front of us
  A many times--I don't say just how many--
  That varies with the things--before we see them.
  One of the lies would make it out that nothing
  Ever presents itself before us twice.
  Where would we be at last if that were so?
  Our very life depends on everything's
  Recurring till we answer from within.
  The thousandth time may prove the charm.--That leaf!
  It can't turn either way. It needs the wind's help.
  But the wind didn't move it if it moved.
  It moved itself. The wind's at naught in here.
  It couldn't stir so sensitively poised
  A thing as that. It couldn't reach the lamp
  To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,
  Or blow a rumple in the collie's coat.
  You make a little foursquare block of air,
  Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all
  The illimitable dark and cold and storm,
  And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,
  And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;
  Though for all anyone can tell, repose
  May be the thing you haven't, yet you give it.
  So false it is that what we haven't we can't give;
  So false, that what we always say is true.
  I'll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.
  It won't lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?"

  "I shouldn't want to hurry you, Meserve,
  But if you're going--Say you'll stay, you know?
  But let me raise this curtain on a scene,
  And show you how it's piling up against you.
  You see the snow-white through the white of frost?
  Ask Helen how far up the sash it's climbed
  Since last we read the gage."

                                               "It looks as if
  Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
  And its eyes shut with overeagerness
  To see what people found so interesting
  In one another, and had gone to sleep
  Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
  Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
  Short off, and died against the window-pane."

  "Brother Meserve, take care, you'll scare yourself
  More than you will us with such nightmare talk.
  It's you it matters to, because it's you
  Who have to go out into it alone."

  "Let him talk, Helen, and perhaps he'll stay."

  "Before you drop the curtain--I'm reminded:
  You recollect the boy who came out here
  To breathe the air one winter--had a room
  Down at the Averys'? Well, one sunny morning
  After a downy storm, he passed our place
  And found me banking up the house with snow.
  And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,
  Piling it well above the window-sills.
  The snow against the window caught his eye.
  'Hey, that's a pretty thought'--those were his words.
  'So you can think it's six feet deep outside,
  While you sit warm and read up balanced rations.
  You can't get too much winter in the winter.'
  Those were his words. And he went home and all
  But banked the daylight out of Avery's windows.
  Now you and I would go to no such length.
  At the same time you can't deny it makes
  It not a mite worse, sitting here, we three,
  Playing our fancy, to have the snowline run
  So high across the pane outside. There where
  There is a sort of tunnel in the frost
  More like a tunnel than a hole--way down
  At the far end of it you see a stir
  And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift
  Blown in the wind. I _like_ that--I like _that_.
  Well, now I leave you, people."

                                               "Come, Meserve,
  We thought you were deciding not to go--
  The ways you found to say the praise of comfort
  And being where you are. You want to stay."

  "I'll own it's cold for such a fall of snow.
  This house is frozen brittle, all except
  This room you sit in. If you think the wind
  Sounds further off, it's not because it's dying;
  You're further under in the snow--that's all--
  And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dust
  It bursts against us at the chimney mouth,
  And at the eaves. I like it from inside
  More than I shall out in it. But the horses
  Are rested and it's time to say good-night,
  And let you get to bed again. Good-night,
  Sorry I had to break in on your sleep."

  "Lucky for you you did. Lucky for you
  You had us for a half-way station
  To stop at. If you were the kind of man
  Paid heed to women, you'd take my advice
  And for your family's sake stay where you are.
  But what good is my saying it over and over?
  You've done more than you had a right to think
  You could do--_now_. You know the risk you take
  In going on."

                                    "Our snow-storms as a rule
  Aren't looked on as man-killers, and although
  I'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep
  Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,
  Than the man fighting it to keep above it,
  Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
  In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?
  Their bulk in water would be frozen rock
  In no time out to-night. And yet to-morrow
  They will come budding boughs from tree to tree
  Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee,
  As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm."

  "But why when no one wants you to go on?
  Your wife--she doesn't want you to. We don't,
  And you yourself don't want to. Who else is there?"

  "Save us from being cornered by a woman.
  Well, there's"--She told Fred afterward that in
  The pause right there, she thought the dreaded word
  Was coming, "God." But no, he only said
  "Well, there's--the storm. That says I must go on.
  That wants me as a war might if it came.
  Ask any man."

                                He threw her that as something
  To last her till he got outside the door.
  He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off.
  When Cole returned he found his wife still standing
  Beside the table near the open book,
  Not reading it.

                                     "Well, what kind of a man
  Do you call that?" she said.

                                              "He had the gift
  Of words, or is it tongues, I ought to say?"

  "Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?"

  "Or disregarding people's civil questions--
  What? We've found out in one hour more about him
  Than we had seeing him pass by in the road
  A thousand times. If that's the way he preaches!
  You didn't think you'd keep him after all.
  Oh, I'm not blaming you. He didn't leave you
  Much say in the matter, and I'm just as glad
  We're not in for a night of him. No sleep
  If he had stayed. The least thing set him going.
  It's quiet as an empty church without him."

  "But how much better off are we as it is?
  We'll have to sit here till we know he's safe."

  "Yes, I suppose you'll want to, but I shouldn't.
  He knows what he can do, or he wouldn't try.
  Get into bed I say, and get some rest.
  He won't come back, and if he telephones,
  It won't be for an hour or two."

                                                   "Well then.
  We can't be any help by sitting here
  And living his fight through with him, I suppose."

       *       *       *       *       *

  Cole had been telephoning in the dark.
  Mrs. Cole's voice came from an inner room:
  "Did she call you or you call her?"

                                                "She me.
  You'd better dress: you won't go back to bed.
  We must have been asleep: it's three and after."

  "Had she been ringing long? I'll get my wrapper.
  I want to speak to her."

                                      "All she said was,
  He hadn't come and had he really started."

  "She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago."

  "He had the shovel. He'll have made a fight."

  "Why did I ever let him leave this house!"

  "Don't begin that. You did the best you could
  To keep him--though perhaps you didn't quite
  Conceal a wish to see him show the spunk
  To disobey you. Much his wife'll thank you."

  "Fred, after all I said! You shan't make out
  That it was any way but what it was.
  Did she let on by any word she said
  She didn't thank me?"

                                "When I told her 'Gone,'
  'Well then,' she said, and 'Well then'--like a threat.
  And then her voice came scraping slow: 'Oh, you,
  Why did you let him go'?"

                                  "Asked why we let him?
  You let me there. I'll ask her why she let him.
  She didn't dare to speak when he was here.
  Their number's--twenty-one? The thing won't work.
  Someone's receiver's down. The handle stumbles.
  The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
  It's theirs. She's dropped it from her hand and gone."

  "Try speaking. Say 'Hello'!"

                                         "Hello. Hello."

  "What do you hear?"

                                 "I hear an empty room--
  You know--it sounds that way. And yes, I hear--
  I think I hear a clock--and windows rattling.
  No step though. If she's there she's sitting down."

  "Shout, she may hear you."

                                  "Shouting is no good."

  "Keep speaking then."

                                   "Hello. Hello. Hello.
  You don't suppose--? She wouldn't go out doors?"

  "I'm half afraid that's just what she might do."

  "And leave the children?"

                                   "Wait and call again.
  You can't hear whether she has left the door
  Wide open and the wind's blown out the lamp
  And the fire's died and the room's dark and cold?"

  "One of two things, either she's gone to bed
  Or gone out doors."

                           "In which case both are lost.
  Do you know what she's like? Have you ever met her?
  It's strange she doesn't want to speak to us."

        "Fred, see if you can hear what I hear. Come."

  "A clock maybe."

                        "Don't you hear something else?"

  "Not talking."

                          "No."

                         "Why, yes, I hear--what is it?"

  "What do you say it is?"

                    "A baby's crying!
  Frantic it sounds, though muffled and far off."

  "Its mother wouldn't let it cry like that,
  Not if she's there."

                               "What do you make of it?"

  "There's only one thing possible to make,
  That is, assuming--that she has gone out.
  Of course she hasn't though." They both sat down
  Helpless. "There's nothing we can do till morning."

  "Fred, I shan't let you think of going out."

  "Hold on." The double bell began to chirp.
  They started up. Fred took the telephone.
  "Hello, Meserve. You're there, then!--And your wife?
  Good! Why I asked--she didn't seem to answer.
  He says she went to let him in the barn.--
  We're glad. Oh, say no more about it, man.
  Drop in and see us when you're passing."

                                                  "Well,
  She has him then, though what she wants him for
  I _don't_ see."

                              "Possibly not for herself.
  Maybe she only wants him for the children."

  "The whole to-do seems to have been for nothing.
  What spoiled our night was to him just his fun.
  What did he come in for?--To talk and visit?
  Thought he'd just call to tell us it was snowing.
  If he thinks he is going to make our house
  A halfway coffee house 'twixt town and nowhere----"

  "I thought you'd feel you'd been too much concerned."

  "You think you haven't been concerned yourself."

  "If you mean he was inconsiderate
  To rout us out to think for him at midnight
  And then take our advice no more than nothing,
  Why, I agree with you. But let's forgive him.
  We've had a share in one night of his life.
  What'll you bet he ever calls again?"




_THE SOUND OF THE TREES_


  _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 the day
  Till we lose all measure of pace,
  And fixity in our joys,
  And acquire a listening air.
  They are that that talks of going
  But never gets away;
  And that talks no less for knowing,
  As it grows wiser and older,
  That now it means to stay.
  My feet tug at the floor
  And my head sways to my shoulder
  Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
  From the window or the door.
  I shall set forth for somewhere,
  I shall make the reckless choice
  Some day when they are in voice
  And tossing so as to scare
  The white clouds over them on.
  I shall have less to say,
  But I shall be gone._

       *       *       *       *       *




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Transcriber Notes

Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.

Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is preserved.

Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted.

Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.

Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.


Transcriber Changes

The following changes were made to the original text:

  Page 46: Added period after =trees= (Tomatoes, beets,
           beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit =trees.=)

  Page 63: Added stanza break between go and Don't (And
           three miles more to =go!" "Don't= let him go.)

  Page 63: Single quote changed to double after =through=
           ("He'll pull =through."=)

  Page 72: Removed extra stanza break after =stumbles=
           (The handle =stumbles. The= stubborn thing, the way it
           jars your arm!)

  Page 74: Removed extra stanza break after =wife=
           ("Hello, Meserve. You're there, then!--And your =wife?
           Good!= Why I asked--she didn't seem to answer.)








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