The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (95 page)

SOURCE
: The Century Magazine
(April 1916).

ROBERT
FROST

Born in San Francisco in 1874, Frost moved east with his family at age eleven, and, through his poetry and persona, became associated with New England. Certainly the most popular and famous American poet of the twentieth century, Frost wrote in measured forms but with a spare, fresh colloquial voice. He died in 1963.

The
Road Not Taken
(1916)

                
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.

S
OURCE:
Robert Frost.
Mountain Interval
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

Meeting
and Passing
(1916)

            
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.

S
OURCE:
Robert Frost.
Mountain Interval
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

Birches
(1916)

    
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 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 the 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.

S
OURCE:
Robert Frost.
Mountain Interval
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

A
Time to Talk
(1916)

                
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.

S
OURCE:
Robert Frost.
Mountain Interval
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

The
Line-Gang
(1916)

            
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.

S
OURCE:
Robert Frost.
Mountain Interval
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

The
Sound of the Trees
(1916)

                    
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.

S
OURCE:
Robert Frost.
Mountain Interval
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

Fragmentary
Blue
(1920)

        
Why make so much of fragmentary blue

        
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

        
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

        
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?