Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920. COMPLIMENTS OF BARTLEBY.COM 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 5 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 10 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 15 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. 20 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. 25 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, 30 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, 35 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. 40 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——” 45 Oh, never by way of advice! And she never sins by telling the tale To the same person twice. 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 5 Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten— If I ever read it. 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 5 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, 10 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. 15 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? 20 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.” 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? 5 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. 10 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. 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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. 25 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.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 17:09:49 +0000
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