A neighbor of mine in the villageLikes to tell how one springWhen she was a girl on the farm, she didA childlike thing. One day she asked her fatherTo give her a garden plotTo plant and tend and reap herself,And he said, “Why not?” In casting about for a cornerHe thought of an idle bitOf […]

“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 piledWith 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 boughDown dark converging paths between the […]

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 tossedThe fresh chips,With a song only to herselfOn her lips. And once she went to […]

She had no saying dark enoughFor the dark pine that keptForever trying the window-latchOf the room where they slept. The tireless but ineffectual handsThat with every futile passMade the great tree seem as a little birdBefore the mystery of glass! It never had been inside the room,And only one of the twoWas afraid in an […]

Here come the line-gang pioneering by.They throw a forest down less cut than broken.They plant dead trees for living, and the deadThey string together with a living thread.They string an instrument against the skyWherein words whether beaten out or spokenWill run as hushed as when they were a thought.But in no hush they string it: […]

There overtook me and drew me inTo his down-hill, early-morning stride,And set me five miles on my roadBetter than if he had had me ride,A man with a swinging bag for loadAnd half the bag wound round his hand.We talked like barking above the dinOf water we walked along beside.And for my telling him where […]

Brown lived at such a lofty farmThat everyone for miles could seeHis lantern when he did his choresIn winter after half-past three. And many must have seen him makeHis wild descent from there one night,‘Cross lots, ‘cross walls, ‘cross everything,Describing rings of lantern light. Between the house and barn the galeGot him by something he […]

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd 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 countFive mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had […]

I wonder about the trees.Why do we wish to bearForever the noise of theseMore than another noiseSo close to our dwelling place?We suffer them by the dayTill we lose all measure of pace,And fixity in our joys,And acquire a listening air.They are that that talks of goingBut never gets away;And that talks no less for […]

The three stood listening to a fresh accessOf wind that caught against the house a moment,Gulped snow, and then blew free again–the ColesDressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep,Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore. Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backwardOver his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying,“You can just see […]

He is said to have been the last Red ManIn 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 […]

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also great,And would suffice.

Having a wheel and four legs of its ownHas never availed the cumbersome grindstoneTo get it anywhere that I can see.These hands have helped it go and even race;Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,Not all the miles it may have thought it went,Have got it one step from the starting place.It stands beside […]

Circa 1922 I staid the night for shelter at a farmBehind the mountain, with a mother and son,Two old-believers. They did all the talking. The MotherFolks think a witch who has familiar spiritsShe could call up to pass a winter evening,But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something.Summoning spirits isn’t “Button, button,Who’s got […]

The farm house lingers, though averse to squareWith the new city street it has to wearA number in. But what about the brookThat held the house as in an elbow-crook?I ask as one who knew the brook, its strengthAnd impulse, having dipped a finger-lengthAnd made it leap my knuckle, having tossedA flower to try its […]

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,On a white heal-all, holding up a mothLike a white piece of rigid satin cloth–Assorted characters of death and blightMixed ready to begin the morning right,Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that […]