Poems of Robert Frost. Large Collection, includes A Boy's Will, North of Boston and Mountain Interval (7 page)

Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew,

And of her half asleep was too much for me.

Why, I might wake her up and startle her.

It was the words ‘descended into Hades’

That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth.

You know they suffered from a general onslaught.

And well, if they weren’t true why keep right on

Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them.

Only—there was the bonnet in the pew.

Such a phrase couldn’t have meant much to her.

But suppose she had missed it from the Creed

As a child misses the unsaid Good-night,

And falls asleep with heartache—how should
I
feel?

I’m just as glad she made me keep hands off,

For, dear me, why abandon a belief

Merely because it ceases to be true.

Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt

It will turn true again, for so it goes.

Most of the change we think we see in life

Is due to truths being in and out of favour.

As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish

I could be monarch of a desert land

I could devote and dedicate forever

To the truths we keep coming back and back to.

So desert it would have to be, so walled

By mountain ranges half in summer snow,

No one would covet it or think it worth

The pains of conquering to force change on.

Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly

Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk

Blown over and over themselves in idleness.

Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew

The babe born to the desert, the sand storm

Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans—

There are bees in this wall.” He struck the clapboards,

Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted.

We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.

“You ought to have seen what I saw on my way

To the village, through Mortenson’s pasture to-day:

Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,

Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum

In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!

And all ripe together, not some of them green

And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!”

“I don’t know what part of the pasture you mean.”

“You know where they cut off the woods—let me see—

It was two years ago—or no!—can it be

No longer than that?—and the following fall

The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall.”

“Why, there hasn’t been time for the bushes to grow.

That’s always the way with the blueberries, though:

There may not have been the ghost of a sign

Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,

But get the pine out of the way, you may burn

The pasture all over until not a fern

Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,

And presto, they’re up all around you as thick

And hard to explain as a conjuror’s trick.”

“It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.

I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.

And after all really they’re ebony skinned:

The blue’s but a mist from the breath of the wind,

A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,

And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned.”

“Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?”

“He may and not care and so leave the chewink

To gather them for him—you know what he is.

He won’t make the fact that they’re rightfully his

An excuse for keeping us other folk out.”

“I wonder you didn’t see Loren about.”

“The best of it was that I did. Do you know,

I was just getting through what the field had to show

And over the wall and into the road,

When who should come by, with a democrat-load

Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,

But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive.”

“He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?”

“He just kept nodding his head up and down.

You know how politely he always goes by.

But he thought a big thought—I could tell by his eye—

Which being expressed, might be this in effect:

‘I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect,

To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.’”

“He’s a thriftier person than some I could name.”

“He seems to be thrifty; and hasn’t he need,

With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?

He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,

Like birds. They store a great many away.

They eat them the year round, and those they don’t eat

They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet.”

“Who cares what they say? It’s a nice way to live,

Just taking what Nature is willing to give,

Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow.”

“I wish you had seen his perpetual bow—

And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,

And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned.”

“I wish I knew half what the flock of them know

Of where all the berries and other things grow,

Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top

Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.

I met them one day and each had a flower

Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower;

Some strange kind—they told me it hadn’t a name.”

“I’ve told you how once not long after we came,

I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth

By going to him of all people on earth

To ask if he knew any fruit to be had

For the picking. The rascal, he said he’d be glad

To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.

There
had
been some berries—but those were all gone.

He didn’t say where they had been. He went on:

‘I’m sure—I’m sure’—as polite as could be.

He spoke to his wife in the door, ‘Let me see,

Mame, we don’t know any good berrying place?’

It was all he could do to keep a straight face.”

“If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,

He’ll find he’s mistaken. See here, for a whim,

We’ll pick in the Mortensons’ pasture this year.

We’ll go in the morning, that is, if it’s clear,

And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet.

It’s so long since I picked I almost forget

How we used to pick berries: we took one look round,

Then sank out of sight like trolls underground,

And saw nothing more of each other, or heard,

Unless when you said I was keeping a bird

Away from its nest, and I said it was you.

‘Well, one of us is.’ For complaining it flew

Around and around us. And then for a while

We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,

And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout

Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out,

For when you made answer, your voice was as low

As talking—you stood up beside me, you know.”

“We sha’n’t have the place to ourselves to enjoy—

Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy.

They’ll be there to-morrow, or even to-night.

They won’t be too friendly—they may be polite—

To people they look on as having no right

To pick where they’re picking. But we won’t complain.

You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,

The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,

Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves.”

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 way you lived, but I don’t know!

With a houseful of hungry men to feed

I guess you’d find. . . . It seems to me

I can’t express my feelings any more

Than I can raise my voice or want to lift

My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).

Did ever you feel so? I hope you never.

It’s got so I don’t even know for sure

Whether I
am
glad, sorry, or anything.

There’s nothing but a voice-like left inside

That seems to tell me how I ought to feel,

And would feel if I wasn’t all gone wrong.

You take the lake. I look and look at it.

I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water.

I stand and make myself repeat out loud

The advantages it has, so long and narrow,

Like a deep piece of some old running river

Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles

Straight away through the mountain notch

From the sink window where I wash the plates,

And all our storms come up toward the house,

Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter.

It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit

To step outdoors and take the water dazzle

A sunny morning, or take the rising wind

About my face and body and through my wrapper,

When a storm threatened from the Dragon’s Den,

And a cold chill shivered across the lake.

I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water,

Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it?

I expect, though, everyone’s heard of it.

In a book about ferns? Listen to that!

You let things more like feathers regulate

Your going and coming. And you like it here?

I can see how you might. But I don’t know!

It would be different if more people came,

For then there would be business. As it is,

The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them,

Sometimes we don’t. We’ve a good piece of shore

That ought to be worth something, and may yet.

But I don’t count on it as much as Len.

He looks on the bright side of everything,

Including me. He thinks I’ll be all right

With doctoring. But it’s not medicine—

Lowe is the only doctor’s dared to say so—

It’s rest I want—there, I have said it out—

From cooking meals for hungry hired men

And washing dishes after them—from doing

Things over and over that just won’t stay done.

By good rights I ought not to have so much

Put on me, but there seems no other way.

Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.

He says the best way out is always through.

And I agree to that, or in so far

As that I can see no way out but through—

Leastways for me—and then they’ll be convinced.

It’s not that Len don’t want the best for me.

It was his plan our moving over in

Beside the lake from where that day I showed you

We used to live—ten miles from anywhere.

We didn’t change without some sacrifice,

But Len went at it to make up the loss.

His work’s a man’s, of course, from sun to sun,

But he works when he works as hard as I do—

Though there’s small profit in comparisons.

(Women and men will make them all the same.)

But work ain’t all. Len undertakes too much.

He’s into everything in town. This year

It’s highways, and he’s got too many men

Around him to look after that make waste.

They take advantage of him shamefully,

And proud, too, of themselves for doing so.

We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings,

Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk

While I fry their bacon. Much they care!

No more put out in what they do or say

Than if I wasn’t in the room at all.

Coming and going all the time, they are:

I don’t learn what their names are, let alone

Their characters, or whether they are safe

To have inside the house with doors unlocked.

I’m not afraid of them, though, if they’re not

Afraid of me. There’s two can play at that.

I have my fancies: it runs in the family.

My father’s brother wasn’t right. They kept him

Locked up for years back there at the old farm.

I’ve been away once—yes, I’ve been away.

The State Asylum. I was prejudiced;

I wouldn’t have sent anyone of mine there;

You know the old idea—the only asylum

Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford,

Rather than send their folks to such a place,

Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.

But it’s not so: the place is the asylum.

There they have every means proper to do with,

And you aren’t darkening other people’s lives—

Worse than no good to them, and they no good

To you in your condition; you can’t know

Affection or the want of it in that state.

I’ve heard too much of the old-fashioned way.

My father’s brother, he went mad quite young.

Some thought he had been bitten by a dog,

Because his violence took on the form

Of carrying his pillow in his teeth;

But it’s more likely he was crossed in love,

Or so the story goes. It was some girl.

Anyway all he talked about was love.

They soon saw he would do someone a mischief

If he wa’n’t kept strict watch of, and it ended

In father’s building him a sort of cage,

Or room within a room, of hickory poles,

Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,—

A narrow passage all the way around.

Anything they put in for furniture

He’d tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on.

So they made the place comfortable with straw,

Like a beast’s stall, to ease their consciences.

Of course they had to feed him without dishes.

They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded