Alone Maya Angelou Poem

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone. 

A Plagued Journey Maya Angelou Poem

There is no warning rattle at the door 
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards. 
Safe in the dark prison, I know that 
light slides over
the fingered work of a toothless 
woman in Pakistan.
Happy prints of
an invisible time are illumined. 
My mouth agape
rejects the solid air and
lungs hold. The invader takes 
direction and
seeps through the plaster walls. 
It is at my chamber, entering 
the keyhole, pushing
through the padding of the door. 
I cannot scream. A bone
of fear clogs my throat.
It is upon me. It is
sunrise, with Hope
its arrogant rider.
My mind, formerly quiescent
in its snug encasement, is strained
to look upon their rapturous visages, 
to let them enter even into me. 
I am forced
outside myself to
mount the light and ride joined with Hope.

Through all the bright hours 
I cling to expectation, until 
darkness comes to reclaim me
as its own. Hope fades, day is gone 
into its irredeemable place
and I am thrown back into the familiar 
bonds of disconsolation.
Gloom crawls around
lapping lasciviously
between my toes, at my ankles, 
and it sucks the strands of my 
hair. It forgives my heady 
fling with Hope. I am
joined again into its
greedy arms. 

A Conceit Maya Angelou Poem

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand. 

A Brave and Startling Truth Maya Angelou Poem

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet 
Traveling through casual space 
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns 
To a destination where all signs tell us 
It is possible and imperative that we learn 
A brave and startling truth 

And when we come to it 
To the day of peacemaking 
When we release our fingers 
From fists of hostility 
And allow the pure air to cool our palms 

When we come to it 
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate 
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean 
When battlefields and coliseum 
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters 
Up with the bruised and bloody grass 
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil 

When the rapacious storming of the churches 
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased 
When the pennants are waving gaily 
When the banners of the world tremble 
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze 

When we come to it 
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders 
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce 
When land mines of death have been removed 
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace 
When religious ritual is not perfumed 
By the incense of burning flesh 
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake 
By nightmares of abuse 

When we come to it 
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids 
With their stones set in mysterious perfection 
Nor the Gardens of Babylon 
Hanging as eternal beauty 
In our collective memory 
Not the Grand Canyon 
Kindled into delicious color 
By Western sunsets 

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe 
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji 
Stretching to the Rising Sun 
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, 
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores 
These are not the only wonders of the world 

When we come to it 
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe 
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger 
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace 
We, this people on this mote of matter 
In whose mouths abide cankerous words 
Which challenge our very existence 
Yet out of those same mouths 
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness 
That the heart falters in its labor 
And the body is quieted into awe 

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet 
Whose hands can strike with such abandon 
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living 
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness 
That the haughty neck is happy to bow 
And the proud back is glad to bend 
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction 
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 

When we come to it 
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body 
Created on this earth, of this earth 
Have the power to fashion for this earth 
A climate where every man and every woman 
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety 
Without crippling fear 

When we come to it 
We must confess that we are the possible 
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world 
That is when, and only when 
We come to it. 

Unharvested Robert Frost Poem

A scent of ripeness from over a wall. 
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall, 
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load, 
And of all but its trivial foliage free, 
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan. 
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man. 
The ground was one circle of solid red. 

May something go always unharvested! 
May much stay out of our stated plan, 
Apples or something forgotten and left, 
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft. 

Two Tramps in Mud Time Robert Frost Poem

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay

And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes. 

Two Look at Two Robert Frost Poem

Love and forgetting might have carried them 
A little further up the mountain side 
With night so near, but not much further up. 
They must have halted soon in any case 
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was 
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness; 
When they were halted by a tumbled wall 
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this, 
Spending what onward impulse they still had 
In One last look the way they must not go, 
On up the failing path, where, if a stone 
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself; 
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed, 
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more. 
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them 
Across the wall, as near the wall as they. 
She saw them in their field, they her in hers. 
The difficulty of seeing what stood still, 
Like some up-ended boulder split in two, 
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there. 
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe. 
Then, as if they were something that, though strange, 
She could not trouble her mind with too long, 
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall. 
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?' 
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait. 
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them 
Across the wall as near the wall as they. 
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril, 
Not the same doe come back into her place. 
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head, 
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion? 
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't. 
I doubt if you're as living as you look." 
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared 
To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking. 
Then he too passed unscared along the wall. 
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from. 
'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood, 
A great wave from it going over them, 
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour 
Had made them certain earth returned their love. 

Tree at my Window Robert Frost Poem

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather. 

To The Thawing Wind Robert Frost Poem

Come with rain. O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; make the settled snowbank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But whate'er you do tonight, bath my window, make it flow, Melt it as the ice will go; Melt the glass and leave the sticks Like a hermit's crucifix; Burst into my narrow stall; Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o'er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door.

To Earthward Robert Frost Poem

Love at the lips was touch 
As sweet as I could bear; 
And once that seemed too much; 
I lived on air 

That crossed me from sweet things, 
The flow of - was it musk 
From hidden grapevine springs 
Down hill at dusk? 

I had the swirl and ache 
From sprays of honeysuckle 
That when they're gathered shake 
Dew on the knuckle. 

I craved strong sweets, but those 
Seemed strong when I was young; 
The petal of the rose 
It was that stung. 

Now no joy but lacks salt 
That is not dashed with pain 
And weariness and fault; 
I crave the stain 

Of tears, the aftermark 
Of almost too much love, 
The sweet of bitter bark 
And burning clove. 

When stiff and sore and scarred 
I take away my hand 
From leaning on it hard 
In grass and sand, 

The hurt is not enough: 
I long for weight and strength 
To feel the earth as rough 
To all my length. 

To E.T. Robert Frost PoemI

I slumbered with your poems on my breast
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
To see, if in a dream they brought of you,

I might not have the chance I missed in life
Through some delay, and call you to your face
First soldier, and then poet, and then both,
Who died a soldier-poet of your race.

I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain
Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained--
And one thing more that was not then to say:
The Victory for what it lost and gained.

You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day
The war seemed over more for you than me,
But now for me than you--the other way.

How over, though, for even me who knew
The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine,
If I was not to speak of it to you
And see you pleased once more with words of mine? 

They Were Welcome To Their Belief Robert Frost Poem

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
They were welcome to their belief,
The overimportant pair.

No, it took all the snows that clung
To the low roof over his bed,
Beginning when he was young,
To induce the one snow on his head.

But whenever the roof camme white
The head in the dark below
Was a shade less the color of night,
A shade more the color of snow.

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
But neither one was the thief
Of his raven color of hair. 

The Wood-Pile Robert Frost Poem

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther -- and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather --
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled -- and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay. 

The Vantage Point Robert Frost Poem

If tires of trees I seek again mankind, Well I know where to hie me--in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn. There amid loggin juniper reclined, Myself unseen, I see in white defined Far off the homes of men, and farther still, The graves of men on an opposing hill, Living or dead, whichever are to mind. And if by noon I have too much of these, I have but to turn on my arm, and lo, The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow, My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze, I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant, I look into the crater of the ant. 

The Vanishing Red Robert Frost Poem

He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. 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.
They 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 millstone
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-pint?'

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.
The he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came upstairs 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. 

The Tuft of Flowers Robert Frost Poem

I went to turn the grass once after one 
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun. 

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen 
Before I came to view the levelled scene. 

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze. 

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, 
And I must be, as he had been,—alone, 

"As all must be," I said within my heart, 
"Whether they work together or apart." 

But as I said it, swift there passed me by 
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly, 

Seeking with memories grown dim over night 
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight. 

And once I marked his flight go round and round, 
As where some flower lay withering on the ground. 

And then he flew as far as eye could see, 
And then on tremulous wing came back to me. 

I thought of questions that have no reply, 
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; 

But he turned first, and led my eye to look 
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, 

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared 
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. 

I left my place to know them by their name, 
Finding them butterfly-weed when I came. 

The mower in the dew had loved them thus, 
By leaving them to flourish, not for us, 

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him, 
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim. 

The butterfly and I had lit upon, 
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, 

That made me hear the wakening birds around, 
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground, 

And feel a spirit kindred to my own; 
So that henceforth I worked no more alone; 

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, 
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade; 

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech 
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach. 

"Men work together," I told him from the heart, 
"Whether they work together or apart." 

The Trial By Existence Robert Frost Poem

Even the bravest that are slain   Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign,   Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword   Wide fields of asphodel fore'er, To find that the utmost reward   Of daring should be still to dare. 

The Telephone Robert Frost Poem

'When I was just as far as I could walk From here today, There was an hour All still When leaning with my head again 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 on 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.' 

The Star Splitter

You know Orion always comes up sideways. 
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, 
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me 
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something 
I should have done by daylight, and indeed, 
After the ground is frozen, I should have done 
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful 
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney 
To make fun of my way of doing things, 
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me. 
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights 
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?' 
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk 
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming, 
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming 
He burned his house down for the fire insurance 
And spent the proceeds on a telescope 
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity 
About our place among the infinities. 

`What do you want with one of those blame things?' 
I asked him well beforehand. `Don't you get one!' 

`Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything 
More blameless in the sense of being less 
A weapon in our human fight,' he said. 
`I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it.' 
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground 
And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move, 
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years 
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling, 
He burned his house down for the fire insurance 
And bought the telescope with what it came to. 
He had been heard to say by several: 
`The best thing that we're put here for's to see; 
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's 
A telescope. Someone in every town 
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one. 
In Littleton it might as well be me.' 
After such loose talk it was no surprise 
When he did what he did and burned his house down. 

Mean laughter went about the town that day 
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on, 
And he could wait---we'd see to him tomorrow. 
But the first thing next morning we reflected 
If one by one we counted people out 
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long 
To get so we had no one left to live with. 
For to be social is to be forgiving. 
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us, 
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers, 
But what we miss we go to him and ask for. 
He promptly gives it back, that is if still 
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of. 
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad 
About his telescope. Beyond the age 
Of being given one for Christmas gift, 
He had to take the best way he knew how 
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was 
He took a strange thing to be roguish over. 
Some sympathy was wasted on the house, 
A good old-timer dating back along; 
But a house isn't sentient; the house 
Didn't feel anything. And if it did, 
Why not regard it as a sacrifice, 
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire, 
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction? 

Out of a house and so out of a farm 
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn 
To earn a living on the Concord railroad, 
As under-ticket-agent at a station 
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets, 
Was setting out, up track and down, not plants 
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars 
That varied in their hue from red to green. 

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars. 
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing. 
Often he bid me come and have a look 
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside, 
At a star quaking in the other end. 
I recollect a night of broken clouds 
And underfoot snow melted down to ice, 
And melting further in the wind to mud. 
Bradford and I had out the telescope. 
We spread our two legs as we spread its three, 
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it, 
And standing at our leisure till the day broke, 
Said some of the best things we ever said. 
That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter, 
Because it didn't do a thing but split 
A star in two or three, the way you split 
A globule of quicksilver in your hand 
With one stroke of your finger in the middle. 
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one, 
And ought to do some good if splitting stars 
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood. 

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? 
Do we know any better where we are, 
And how it stands between the night tonight 
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney? 
How different from the way it ever stood? 

The Span Of Life Robert Frost Poem

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

The Sound of Trees Robert Frost Poem

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. 

The Soldier Robert Frost Poem

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, 
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, 
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. 
If we who sight along it round the world, 
See nothing worthy to have been its mark, 
It is because like men we look too near, 
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, 
Our missiles always make too short an arc. 
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect 
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; 
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. 
But this we know, the obstacle that checked 
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on 
Further than target ever showed or shone. 

The Silken Tent Robert Frost Poem

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightlest bondage made aware. 

The Secret Sits Robert Frost Poem

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. 

The Rose Family Robert Frost Poem

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose -
But were always a rose. 

The Road Not Taken Robert Frost Poem

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. 

The Pasture Robert Frost Poem

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too. 

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too. 

The Oven Bird Robert Frost Poem

There is a singer eveyone 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. 

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 Objection To Being Stepped On Robert Frost Poem

At the end of the row 
I stepped on the toe 
Of an unemployed hoe. 
It rose in offense 
And struck me a blow 
In the seat of my sense. 
It wasn't to blame 
But I called it a name. 
And I must say it dealt 
Me a blow that I felt 
Like a malice prepense. 
You may call me a fool, 
But was there a rule 
The weapon should be 
Turned into a tool? 
And what do we see? 
The first tool I step on 
Turned into a weapon. 

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things Robert Frost Poem

The house had gone to bring again 
To the midnight sky a sunset glow. 
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go. 

The barn opposed across the way, 
That would have joined the house in flame 
Had it been the will of the wind, was left 
To bear forsaken the place's name. 

No more it opened with all one end 
For teams that came by the stony road 
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs 
And brush the mow with the summer load. 

The birds that came to it through the air 
At broken windows flew out and in, 
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh 
From too much dwelling on what has been. 

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf, 
And the aged elm, though touched with fire; 
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm; 
And the fence post carried a strand of wire. 

For them there was really nothing sad. 
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept, 
One had to be versed in country things 
Not to believe the phoebes wept. 

The Mountain Robert Frost Poem

The mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its black body cut into the sky.
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
And yet between the town and it I found,
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,
Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
The river at the time was fallen away,
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;
But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.
I crossed the river and swung round the mountain.
And there I met a man who moved so slow
With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart,
It seemed no hand to stop him altogether.
'What town is this?' I asked.
'This? Lunenburg.'
Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn,
Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain,
But only felt at night its shadowy presence.
'Where is your village? Very far from here?'
'There is no village-only scattered farms.
We were but sixty voters last election.
We can't in nature grow to many more:
That thing takes all the room!' He moved his goad.
The mountain stood there to be pointed at.
Pasture ran up the side a little way,
And then there was a wall of trees with trunks:
After that only tops of trees, and cliffs
Imperfectly concealed among the leaves.
A dry ravine emerged from under boughs
Into the pasture.
'That looks like a path.
Is that the way to reach the top from here?-
Not for this morning, but some other time:
I must be getting back to breakfast now.'
'I don't advise your trying from this side.
There is no proper path, but those that have
Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's.
That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place:
They logged it there last winter some way up.
I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way.'
'You've never climbed it?'
'I've been on the sides
Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook
That starts up on it somewhere-I've heard say
Right on the top, tip-top-a curious thing.
But what would interest you about the brook,
It's always cold in summer, warm in winter.
One of the great sights going is to see
It steam in winter like an ox's breath,
Until the bushes all along its banks
Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles-
You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!'
'There ought to be a view around the world
From such a mountain-if it isn't wooded
Clear to the top.' I saw through leafy screens
Great granite terraces in sun and shadow,
Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up-
With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet;
Or turn and sit on and look out and down,
With little ferns in crevices at his elbow.
'As to that I can't say. But there's the spring,
Right on the summit, almost like a fountain.
That ought to be worth seeing.'
'If it's there.
You never saw it?'
'I guess there's no doubt
About its being there. I never saw it.
It may not be right on the very top:
It wouldn't have to be a long way down
To have some head of water from above,
And a good distance down might not be noticed
By anyone who'd come a long way up.
One time I asked a fellow climbing it
To look and tell me later how it was.'
'What did he say?'
'He said there was a lake
Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top.'
'But a lake's different. What about the spring?'
'He never got up high enough to see.
That's why I don't advise your trying this side.
He tried this side. I've always meant to go
And look myself, but you know how it is:
It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain
You've worked around the foot of all your life.
What would I do? Go in my overalls,
With a big stick, the same as when the cows
Haven't come down to the bars at milking time?
Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear?
'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it.'
'I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to-
Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?'
'We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right.'
'Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?'
'You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg,
But it's as much as ever you can do,
The boundary lines keep in so close to it.
Hor is the township, and the township's Hor-
And a few houses sprinkled round the foot,
Like boulders broken off the upper cliff,
Rolled out a little farther than the rest.'
'Warm in December, cold in June, you say?'
'I don't suppose the water's changed at all.
You and I know enough to know it's warm
Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm.
But all the fun's in how you say a thing.'
'You've lived here all your life?'
'Ever since Hor
Was no bigger than a--' What, I did not hear.
He drew the oxen toward him with light touches
Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank,
Gave them their marching orders and was moving

The Master Speed

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar 

The Lockless Door Robert Frost Poem

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a "Come in"
To whoever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age. 

The Line-Gang Robert Frost Poem

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 taught,
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 Impulse Robert Frost Poem

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 Gum-Gatherer Robert Frost Poem

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 hop. eless 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 logs
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 Gift Outright Robert Frost Poem

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become. 

The Flower Boat Robert Frost Poem

The fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn
Under the hand of the village barber,
And her in the angle of house and barn
His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.

At anchor she rides the sunny sod
As full to the gunnel of flowers growing
As ever she turned her home with cod
From George's bank when winds were blowing.

And I judge from that elysian freight
That all they ask is rougher weather,
And dory and master will sail by fate
To seek the Happy Isles together. 

Range-Finding Robert Frost Poem

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. 

Quandary Robert Frost Poem

Never have I been glad or sad
That there was such a thing as bad.
There had to be, I understood, 
For there to have been any good. 
It was by having been contrasted
That good and bad so long had lasted.
That's why discrimination reigns.
That's why we need a lot of brains
If only to discriminate 
'Twixt what to love and what to hate.
To quote the oracle at Delphi, 
Love thy neighbor as thyself, aye, 
And hate him as thyself thou hatest.
There quandary is at its greatest.
We learned from the forbidden fruit
For brains there is no substitute.
'Unless it's sweetbreads, ' you suggest
With innuendo I detest.
You drive me to confess in ink: 
Once I was fool enough to think
That brains and sweetbreads were the same, 
Till I was caught and put to shame, 
First by a butcher, then a cook, 
Then by a scientific book.
But ' twas by making sweetbreads do
I passed with such a high I.Q. 

Putting In The Seed Robert Frost Poem

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. 

Provide, Provide Robert Frost Poem

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on being simply true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide! 

Plowmen Robert Frost Poem

A plow, they say, to plow the snow.
They cannot mean to plant it, no --
Unless in bitterness to mock
At having cultivated rock. 

Pan With Us Robert Frost Poem

Pan came out of the woods one day,-- His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray, The gray of the moss of walls were they,--   And stood in the sun and looked his fill   At wooded valley and wooded hill. 

Out, Out Robert Frost Poem

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 that 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. 

Once by the Pacific Robert Frost Poem

The shattered water made a misty din. 
Great waves looked over others coming in, 
And thought of doing something to the shore 
That water never did to land before. 
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, 
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. 
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if 
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, 
The cliff in being backed by continent; 
It looked as if a night of dark intent 
Was coming, and not only a night, an age. 
Someone had better be prepared for rage. 
There would be more than ocean-water broken 
Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.