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 it glancing off the roofMaking a great scroll upward toward the sky,Long enough for recording all our names on;I think I'll just call up my wife and tell herI'm here—so far—and starting on again.I'll call her softly so that if she's wiseAnd gone to sleep, she needn't wake to answer."Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened."Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I'm at Cole's. I'm late.I called you up to say Good-night from hereBefore I went to say Good-morning there.—I thought I would.—I know, but, Lett—I know—I could, but what's the sense? The rest won't beSo bad.—Give me an hour for it.—Ho, ho!Three hours to here! But that was all up hill;The rest is down.—Why, no, no, not a wallow:They kept their heads and took their time to itLike darlings, both of them. They're in the barn.—My dear, I'm coming just the same. I didn'tCall you to ask you to invite me home.—"He lingered for some word she wouldn't say,Said it at last himself, "Good-night," and then,Getting no answer, closed the telephone.The three stood in the lamplight round the tableWith lowered eyes a moment till he said,"I'll just see how the horses are.""Yes, do,"Both the Coles said together. Mrs. ColeAdded: "You can judge better after seeing.—I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,Brother Meserve. You know to find your wayOut through the shed.""I guess I know my way,I guess I know where I can find my nameCarved in the shed to tell me who I amIf it don't tell me where I am. I usedTo play——""You tend your horses and come back.Fred Cole, you're going to let him!""Well, aren't you?How can you help yourself?""I called him Brother.Why did I call him that?""It's right enough.That's all you ever heard him called round here.He seems to have lost off his Christian name.""Christian enough I should call that myself.He took no notice, did he? Well, at leastI didn't use it out of love of him,The dear knows. I detest the thought of himWith his ten children under ten years old.I hate his wretched little Racker Sect,All's ever I heard of it, which isn't much.But that's not saying——Look, Fred Cole, it'stwelve,Isn't it, now? He's been here half an hour.He says he left the village store at nine.Three hours to do four miles—a mile an hourOr not much better. Why, it doesn't seemAs if a man could move that slow and move.Try to think what he did with all that time.And three miles more to go!""Don't let him go.Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.That sort of man talks straight on all his lifeFrom the last thing he said himself, stone deafTo anything anyone else may say.I should have thought, though, you could make himhear you.""What is he doing out a night like this?Why can't he stay at home?""He had to preach.""It's no night to be out.""He may be small,He may be good, but one thing's sure, he's tough.""And strong of stale tobacco.""He'll pull through.""You only say so. Not another houseOr shelter to put into from this placeTo theirs. I'm going to call his wife again.""Wait and he may. Let's see what he will do.Let's see if he will think of her again.But then I doubt he's thinking of himself.He doesn't look on it as anything.""He shan't go—there!""Itisa night, my dear.""One thing: he dicing drag God into it.""He don't consider it a case for God.""You think so, do you? You don't know the kind.He's getting up a miracle this minute.Privately—to himself, right now, he's thinkingHe'll make a case of it if he succeeds,But keep still if he fails.""Keep still all over.He'll be dead—dead and buried.""Such a trouble!Not but I've every reason not to careWhat happens to him if it only takesSome of the sanctimonious conceitOut of one of those pious scalawags.""Nonsense to that! You want to see him safe.""You like the runt.""Don't you a little?""Well,I don't like what he's doing, which is whatYou like, and like him for.""Oh, yes, you do.You like your fun as well as anyone;Only you women have to put these airs onTo impress men. You've got us so ashamedOf being men we can't look at a good fightBetween two boys and not feel bound to stop it.Let the man freeze an ear or two, I say.—He's here. I leave him all to you. Go inAnd save his life.—All right, come in, MeserveSit down, sit down. How did you find the horses?""Fine, fine.""And ready for some more? My wife hereSays it won't do. You've got to give it up.""Won't you to please me? Please! If I say please?Mr. Meserve, I'll leave it toyourwife.Whatdidyour wife say on the telephone?"Meserve seemed to heed nothing but the lampOr something not far from it on the table.By straightening out and lifting a forefinger,He pointed with his hand from where it layLike a white crumpled spider on his knee:"That leaf there in your open book! It movedJust then, I thought. It's stood erect like that,There on the table, ever since I came,Trying to turn itself backward or forward,I've had my eye on it to make out which;If forward, then it's with a friend's impatience—You see I know—to get you on to thingsIt wants to see how you will take, if backwardIt's from regret for something you have passedAnd failed to see the good of. Never mind,Things must expect to come in front of usA many times—I don't say just how many—That varies with the things—before we see them.One of the lies would make it out that nothingEver presents itself before us twice.Where would we be at last if that were so?Our very life depends on everything'sRecurring till we answer from within.The thousandth time may prove the charm.—Thatleaf!It can't turn either way. It needs the wind's help.But the wind didn't move it if it moved.It moved itself. The wind's at naught in here.It couldn't stir so sensitively poisedA thing as that. It couldn't reach the lampTo get a puff of black smoke from the flame,Or blow a rumple in the collie's coat.You make a little foursquare block of air,Quiet and light and warm, in spite of allThe illimitable dark and cold and storm,And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;Though for all anyone can tell, reposeMay be the thing you haven't, yet you give it.So false it is that what we haven't we can't give;So false, that what we always say is true.I'll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.It won't lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?""I shouldn't want to hurry you, Meserve,But if you're going—Say you'll stay, you know?But let me raise this curtain on a scene,And show you how it's piling up against you.You see the snow-white through the white of frost?Ask Helen how far up the sash it's climbedSince last we read the gage.""It looks as ifSome pallid thing had squashed its features flatAnd its eyes shut with overeagernessTo see what people found so interestingIn one another, and had gone to sleepOf its own stupid lack of understanding,Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuffShort off, and died against the window-pane.""Brother Meserve, take care, you'll scare yourselfMore than you will us with such nightmare talk.It's you it matters to, because it's youWho have to go out into it alone.""Let him talk, Helen, and perhaps he'll stay.""Before you drop the curtain—I'm reminded:You recollect the boy who came out hereTo breathe the air one winter—had a roomDown at the Averys'? Well, one sunny morningAfter a downy storm, he passed our placeAnd found me banking up the house with snow.And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,Piling it well above the window-sills.The snow against the window caught his eye.'Hey, that's a pretty thought'—those were hiswords.'So you can think it's six feet deep outside,While you sit warm and read up balanced rations.You can't get too much winter in the winter.'Those were his words. And he went home andallBut banked the daylight out of Avery's windows.Now you and I would go to no such length.At the same time you can't deny it makesIt not a mite worse, sitting here, we three,Playing our fancy, to have the snowline runSo high across the pane outside. There whereThere is a sort of tunnel in the frostMore like a tunnel than a hole—way downAt the far end of it you see a stirAnd quiver like the frayed edge of the driftBlown in the wind. Ilikethat—I like that.Well, now I leave you, people.""Come, Meserve,We thought you were deciding not to go—The ways you found to say the praise of comfortAnd being where you are. You want to stay.""I'll own it's cold for such a fall of snow.This house is frozen brittle, all exceptThis room you sit in. If you think the windSounds further off, it's not because it's dying;You're further under in the snow—that's all—And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dustIt bursts against us at the chimney mouth,And at the eaves. I like it from insideMore than I shall out in it. But the horsesAre rested and it's time to say good-night,And let you get to bed again. Good-night,Sorry I had to break in on your sleep.""Lucky for you you did. Lucky for youYou had us for a half-way stationTo stop at. If you were the kind of manPaid heed to women, you'd take my adviceAnd for your family's sake stay where you are.But what good is my saying it over and over?You've done more than you had a right to thinkYou could do—now.You know the risk you takeIn going on.""Our snow-storms as a ruleAren't looked on as man-killers, and althoughI'd rather be the beast that sleeps the sleepUnder it all, his door sealed up and lost,Than the man fighting it to keep above it,Yet think of the small birds at roost and notIn nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?Their bulk in water would be frozen rockIn no time out to-night. And yet to-morrowThey will come budding boughs from tree to treeFlirting their wings and saying Chickadee,As if not knowing what you meant by the wordstorm.""But why when no one wants you to go on?Your wife—she doesn't want you to. We don't,And you yourself don't want to. Who else is there?""Save us from being cornered by a woman.Well, there's"—She told Fred afterward that inThe pause right there, she thought the dreaded wordWas coming, "God." But no, he only said"Well, there's—the storm. That says I must go on.That wants me as a war might if it came.Ask any man."He threw her that as somethingTo last her till he got outside the door.He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off.When Cole returned he found his wife still standingBeside the table near the open book,Not reading it."Well, what kind of a manDo you call that?" she said."He had the giftOf words, or is it tongues, I ought to say?""Was ever such a man for seeing likeness?""Or disregarding peopled civil questions—What? We've found out in one hour more abouthimThan we had seeing him pass by in the roadA thousand times. If that's the way he preaches!You didn't think you'd keep him after all.Oh, I'm not blaming you. He didn't leave youMuch say in the matter, and I'm just as gladWe're not in for a night of him. No sleepIf he had stayed. The least thing set him going.It's quiet as an empty church without him.""But how much better off are we as it is?We'll have to sit here till we know he's safe.""Yes, I suppose you'll want to, but I shouldn't.He knows what he can do, or he wouldn't try.Get into bed I say, and get some rest.He won't come back, and if he telephones,It won't be for an hour or two.""Well thenWe can't be any help by sitting hereAnd living his fight through with him, I suppose.
* * *
Cole had been telephoning in the dark.Mrs. Cole's voice came from an inner room:"Did she call you or you call her?""She me.You'd better dress: you won't go back to bed.We must have been asleep: it's three and after.""Had she been ringing long? I'll get my wrapper.I want to speak to her.""All she said was,He hadn't come and had he really started.""She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago."He had the shovel. Hell have made a fight.""Why did I ever let him leave this house!""Don't begin that. You did the best you couldTo keep him—though perhaps you didn't quiteConceal a wish to see him show the spunkTo disobey you. Much his wife'll thank you.""Fred, after all I said! You shan't make outThat it was any way but what it was.Did she let on by any word she saidShe didn't thank me?""When I told her 'Gone,''Well then,' she said, and 'Well then'—like athreat.And then her voice came scraping slow: 'Oh, you,Why did you let him go'?""Asked why we let him?You let me there. I'll ask her why she let him.She didn't dare to speak when he was here.Their number's—twenty-one? The thing won'twork.Someone's receiver's down. The handle stumbles.The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!It's theirs. She's dropped it from her hand andgone.""Try speaking. Say 'Hello'!""Hello, Hello.""What do you hear?""I hear an empty room—You know—it sounds that way. And yes, I hear—I think I hear a clock—and windows rattling.No step though. If she's there she's sitting down.""Shout, she may hear you.""Shouting is no good.""Keep speaking then.""Hello. Hello. Hello.You don't suppose—? She wouldn't go out doors?""I'm half afraid that's just what she might do.""And leave the children?""Wait and call again.You can't hear whether she has left the doorWide open and the wind's blown out the lampAnd the fire's died and the room's dark and cold?""One of two things, either she's gone to bedOr gone out doors.""In which case both are lost.Do you know what she's like? Have you ever mether?It's strange she doesn't want to speak to us.""Fred, see if you can hear what I hear. Come.""A clock maybe.""Don't you hear something else?""Not talking.""No.""Why, yes, I hear—what is it?""What do you say it is?""A baby's crying!Frantic it sounds, though muffled and far off.""Its mother wouldn't let it cry like that,Not if she's there.""What do you make of it?""There's only one thing possible to make,That is, assuming—that she has gone out.Of course she hasn't though." They both sat downHelpless. "There's nothing we can do tillmorning.""Fred, I shan't let you think of going out.""Hold on." The double bell began to chirp.They started up. Fred took the telephone."Hello, Meserve. You're there, then!—And yourwife?Good! Why I asked—she didn't seem to answer.He says she went to let him in the barn.—We're glad. Oh, say no more about it, man.Drop in and see us when you're passing.""Well.She has him then, though what she wants him forIdon'tsee.""Possibly not for herself.Maybe she only wants him for the children.""The whole to-do seems to have been for nothing.What spoiled our night was to him just his fun.What did he come in for?—To talk and visit?Thought he'd just call to tell us it was snowing.If he thinks he is going to make our houseA halfway coffee house 'twixt town andnowhere——""I thought you'd feel you'd been too muchconcerned.""You think you haven't been concerned yourself.""If you mean he was inconsiderateTo rout us out to think for him at midnightAnd then take our advice no more than nothing,Why, I agree with you. But let's forgive him.We've had a share in one night of his life.What'll you bet he ever calls again?"
She stood against the kitchen sink, and lookedOver the sink out through a dusty windowAt weeds the water from the sink made tall.She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.Behind her was confusion in the room,Of chairs turned upside down to sit like peopleIn other chairs, and something, come to look,For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,And dining-room—thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.And now and then a smudged, infernal faceLooked in a door behind her and addressedHer back. She always answered without turning."Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?""Put it on top of something that's on topOf something else," she laughed. "Oh, put it whereYou can to-night, and go. It's almost dark;You must be getting started back to town."Another blackened face thrust in and lookedAnd smiled, and when she did not turn, spokegently,"What are you seeing out the window,lady?""Never was I beladied so before.Would evidence of having been called ladyMore than so many times make me a ladyIn common law, I wonder.""But I ask,What are you seeing out the window, lady?""What I'll be seeing more of in the yearsTo come as here I stand and go the roundOf many plates with towels many times.""And what is that? You only put me off.""Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-panMore than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;A little stretch of mowing-field for you;Not much of that until I come to woodsThat end all. And it's scarce enough to callA view.""And yet you think you like it, dear?""That's what you're so concerned to know! Youhope I like it. Bang goes something big awayOff there upstairs. The very tread of menAs great as those is shattering to the frameOf such a little house. Once left alone,You and I, dear, will go with softer stepsUp and down stairs and through the rooms, andnone But sudden winds that snatch them from our handsWill ever slam the doors.""I think you seeMore than you like to own to out that window.""No; for besides the things I tell you of,I only see the years. They come and goIn alternation with the weeds, the field,The wood.""What kind of years?""Why, latter years—Different from early years.""I see them, too.You didn't count them?""No, the further offSo ran together that I didn't try to.It can scarce be that they would be in numberWe'd care to know, for we are not young now.And bang goes something else away off there.It sounds as if it were the men went down,And every crash meant one less to returnTo lighted city streets we, too, have known,But now are giving up for country darkness.""Come from that window where you see too muchfor me,And take a livelier view of things from here.They're going. Watch this husky swarming upOver the wheel into the sky-high seat,Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his noseAt the flame burning downward as he sucks it.""See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proofHow dark it's getting. Can you tell what timeIt is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.A wire she is of silver, as new as weTo everything. Her light won't last us long.It's something, though, to know we're going tohave herNight after night and stronger every nightTo see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;Ask them to help you get it on its feet.We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!""They're not gone yet.""We've got to have the stove,Whatever else we want for. And a light.Have we a piece of candle if the lampAnd oil are buried out of reach?"AgainThe house was full of tramping, and the dark,Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,To which they set it true by eye; and thenCame up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,So much too light and airy for their strengthIt almost seemed to come ballooning up,Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling."A fit!" said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder."It's good luck when you move in to beginWith good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,It's not so bad in the country, settled down,When people 're getting on in life. You'll like it."Joe said: "You big boys ought to find a farm,And make good farmers, and leave other fellowsThe city work to do. There's not enoughFor everybody as it is in there.""God!" one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:"Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm."But Jimmy only made his jaw recedeFool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to sayHe saw himself a farmer. Then there was a FrenchboyWho said with seriousness that made them laugh,"Ma friend, you ain't know what it is you're ask."He doffed his cap and held it with both handsAcross his chest to make as 'twere a bow:"We're giving you our chances on de farm."And then they all turned to with deafening bootsAnd put each other bodily out of the house."Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think—I don't know what they think we see in whatThey leave us to: that pasture slope that seemsThe back some farm presents us; and your woodsTo northward from your window at the sink,Waiting to steal a step on us wheneverWe drop our eyes or turn to other things,As in the game 'Ten-step' the children play.""Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.All they could say was 'God!' when you proposedTheir coming out and making useful farmers.""Did they make something lonesome go throughyou?It would take more than them to sicken you—Us of our bargain. But they left us soAs to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.They almost shookme.""It's all so muchWhat we have always wanted, I confessIt's seeming bad for a moment makes it seemEven worse still, and so on down, down, down.It's nothing; it's their leaving us at dusk.I never bore it well when people went.The first night after guests have gone, the houseSeems haunted or exposed. I always takeA personal interest in the locking upAt bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off."He fetched a dingy lantern from behindA door. "There's that we didn't lose! And these!"Some matches he unpocketed. "For food—The meals we've had no one can take from us.I wish that everything on earth were justAs certain as the meals we've had. I wishThe meals we haven't had were, anyway.What have you you know where to lay your handson?""The bread we bought in passing at the store.There's butter somewhere, too.""Let's rend the bread.I'll light the fire for company for you;You'll not have any other companyTill Ed begins to get out on a SundayTo look us over and give us his ideaOf what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up.He'll know what he would do if he were we,And all at once. He'll plan for us and planTo help us, but he'll take it out in planning.Well, you can set the table with the loaf.Let's see you find your loaf. I'll light the fire.I like chairs occupying other chairsNot offering a lady—""There again, Joe!You're tired.""I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out;Don't mind a word I say. It's a day's workTo empty one house of all household goodsAnd fill another with 'em fifteen miles away,Although you do no more than dump them down.""Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.""It's all so much what I have always wanted,I can't believe it's what you wanted, too.""Shouldn't you like to know?""I'd like to knowIf it is what you wanted, then how muchYou wanted it for me.""A troubled conscience!You don't want me to tell ifIdon't know.""I don't want to find out what can't be known.But who first said the word to come?""My dear,It's who first thought the thought. You'researching, Joe, For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings.Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.There are only middles.""What is this?""This life?Our sitting here by lantern-light togetherAmid the wreckage of a former home?You won't deny the lantern isn't new.The stove is not, and you are not to me,Nor I to you.""Perhaps you never were?""It would take me forever to reciteAll that's not new in where we find ourselves.New is a word for fools in towns who thinkStyle upon style in dress and thought at lastMust get somewhere. I've heard you say as much.No, this is no beginning.""Then an end?""End is a gloomy word.""Is it too lateTo drag you out for just a good-night callOn the old peach trees on the knoll to gropeBy starlight in the grass for a last peachThe neighbors may not have taken as their rightWhen the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking:I doubt if they have left us many grapes.Before we set ourselves to right the house,The first thing in the morning, out we goTo go the round of apple, cherry, peach,Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.All of a farm it is.""I know this much:I'm going to put you in your bed, if firstI have to make you build it. Come, the light."When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,The fire got out through crannies in the stoveAnd danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,As much at home as if they'd always danced there.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveller, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo 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 thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn 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 sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by,And that has made all the difference.
There is a singer everyone 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 flowersMid-summer is to spring as one to ten.He says the early petal-fall is pastWhen pear and cherry bloom went down in showersOn 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 birdsBut that he knows in singing not to sing.The question that he frames in all but wordsIs what to make of a diminished thing.
If tired 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 lolling juniper reclined,Myself unseen, I see in white definedFar off the homes of men, and farther still,The graves of men on an opposing hill,Living or dead, whichever are most 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 aglowMy breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,I look into the crater of the ant.
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 knowing,As it grows wiser and older,That now it means to stay.My feet tug at the floorAnd my head sways to my shoulderSometimes when I watch trees sway,From the window or the door.I shall set forth for somewhere,I shall make the reckless choiceSome day when they are in voiceAnd tossing so as to scareThe white clouds over them on.I shall have less to say,But I shall be gone.
By June our brook's run out of song and speed.Sought for much after that, it will be foundEither to have gone groping underground(And taken with it all the Hyla breedThat shouted in the mist a month ago,Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,Weak foliage that is blown upon and bentEven against the way its waters went.Its bed is left a faded paper sheetOf dead leaves stuck together by the heat—A brook to none but who remember long.This as it will be seen is other farThan with brooks taken otherwhere in song.We love the things we love for what they are.
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,Thinks these dark days of autumn rainAre beautiful as days can be;She loves the bare, the withered tree;She walks the sodden pasture lane.Her pleasure will not let me stay.She talks and I am fain to list:She's glad the birds are gone away,She's glad her simple worsted greyIs silver now with clinging mist.The desolate, deserted trees,The faded earth, the heavy sky,The beauties she so truly sees,She thinks I have no eye for these,And vexes me for reason why.Not yesterday I learned to knowThe love of bare November daysBefore the coming of the snow,But it were vain to tell her so,And they are better for her praise.
The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strungAnd cut a flower beside a ground bird's nestBefore 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 dispossessedA moment sought in air his flower of rest,Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.On the bare upland pasture there had spreadO'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of threadAnd 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.
O hushed October morning mild,Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,Should waste them all.The crows above the forest call;To-morrow they may form and go.O hushed October morning mild,Begin the hours of this day slow,Make the day seem to us less brief.Hearts not averse to being beguiled,Beguile us in the way you know;Release one leaf at break of day;At noon release another leaf;One from our trees, one far away;Retard the sun with gentle mist;Enchant the land with amethyst.Slow, slow!For the grapes' sake, if they were all,Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—For the grapes' sake along the wall.
Come with rain, O loud Southwester!Bring the singer, bring the nester;Give the buried flower a dream;Make the settled snow-bank steam;Find the brown beneath the white;But whate'er you do to-night,Bathe my window, make it flow,Melt it as the ice will go;Melt the glass and leave the sticksLike 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.
When a friend calls to me from the roadAnd slows his horse to a meaning walkI don't stand still and look aroundOn 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 wallFor a friendly visit.
There were three in the meadow by the brookGathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay,With an eye always lifted toward the westWhere an irregular sun-bordered cloudDarkly advanced with a perpetual daggerFlickering across its bosom. SuddenlyOne helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.The town-bred farmer failed to understand."What was there wrong?""Something you just now said.""What did I say?""About our taking pains."To cock the hay?—because it's going to shower?I said that more than half an hour ago.I said it to myself as much as you.""You didn't know. But James is one big fool.He thought you meant to find fault with his work.That's what the average farmer would have meant.James would take time, of course, to chew it overBefore he acted: he's just got round to act.""He is a fool if that's the way he takes me.""Don't let it bother you. You've found outsomething.The hand that knows his business won't be toldTo do work better or faster—those two things.I'm as particular as anyone:Most likely I'd have served you just the same.But I know you don't understand our ways.You were just talking what was in your mind,What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting.Tell you a story of what happened once:I was up here in Salem at a man'sNamed Sanders with a gang of four or fiveDoing the haying. No one liked the boss.He was one of the kind sports call a spider,All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavyFrom a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit.But work! that man could work, especiallyIf by so doing he could get more work,Out of his hired help. I'm not denyingHe was hard on himself. I couldn't findThat he kept any hours—not for himself.Daylight and lantern-light were one to him:I've heard him pounding in the barn all night.But what he liked was someone to encourage.Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behindAnd drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legsoff.I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks(We call that bulling). I'd been watching him.So when he paired off with me in the hayfieldTo load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble.I built the load and topped it off; old SandersCombed it down with a rake and says, 'O. K.'Everything went well till we reached the barnWith a big jag to empty in a bay.You understand that meant the easy jobFor the man up on top of throwingdownThe hay and rolling it off wholesale,Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.You wouldn't think a fellow'd need much urgingUnder those circumstances, would you now?But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!Thinks I, D'ye mean it? 'What was that yousaid?'I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake,'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.'He said it over, but he said it softer.Never you say a thing like that to a man,Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as soonMurdered him as left out his middle name.I'd built the load and knew right where to find it.Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round forLike meditating, and then I just dug inAnd dumped the rackful on him in ten lots,I looked over the side once in the dustAnd caught sight of him treading-water-like,Keeping his head above. 'Damn ye,' I says,'That gets ye!' He squeaked like a squeezed rat.That was the last I saw or heard of him.I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck,And sort of waiting to be asked about it,One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old man?''I left him in the barn under the hay.If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.'They realised from the way I swobbed my neckMore than was needed something must be up.They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.They told me afterward. First they forked hay,A lot of it, out into the barn floor.Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle.I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the templeBefore I buried him, or I couldn't have managed.They excavated more. 'Go keep his wifeOut of the barn.' Someone looked in a window,And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchenSlumped way down in a chair, with both his feetStuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.He looked so clean disgusted from behindThere was no one that dared to stir him up,Or let him know that he was being looked at.Apparently I hadn't buried him(I may have knocked him down); but my justtryingTo bury him had hurt his dignity.He had gone to the house so's not to meet me.He kept away from us all afternoon.We tended to his hay. We saw him outAfter a while picking peas in his garden:He couldn't keep away from doing something.""Weren't you relieved to find he wasn't dead?""No! and yet I don't know—it's hard to say.I went about to kill him fair enough.""You took an awkward way. Did he dischargeyou?""Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right."
Lancaster bore him—such a little town,Such a great man. It doesn't see him oftenOf late years, though he keeps the old homesteadAnd sends the children down there with their motherTo run wild in the summer—a little wild.Sometimes he joins them for a day or twoAnd sees old friends he somehow can't get near.They meet him in the general store at night,Preoccupied with formidable mail,Rifling a printed letter as he talks.They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so:Though a great scholar, he's a democrat,If not at heart, at least on principle.Lately when coming up to LancasterHis train being late he missed another trainAnd had four hours to wait at Woodsville JunctionAfter eleven o'clock at night. Too tiredTo think of sitting such an ordeal out,He turned to the hotel to find a bed."No room," the night clerk said. "Unless——"Woodsville's a place of shrieks and wandering lampsAnd cars that shock and rattle—andonehotel."You say 'unless.'""Unless you wouldn't mindSharing a room with someone else.""Who is it?""A man."So I should hope. What kind of man?""I know him: he's all right. A man's a man.Separate beds of course you understand."The night clerk blinked his eyes and dared him on."Who's that man sleeping in the office chair?Has he had the refusal of my chance?""He was afraid of being robbed or murdered.What do you say?""I'll have to have a bed."The night clerk led him up three flights of stairsAnd down a narrow passage full of doors,At the last one of which he knocked and entered,"Lafe, here's a fellow wants to share yourroom.""Show him this way. I'm not afraid of him,I'm not so drunk I can't take care of myself."The night clerk clapped a bedstead on the foot."This will be yours. Good-night," he said, andwent."Lafe was the name, I think?""Yes,Layfayette.You got it the first time. And yours?""Magoon.Doctor Magoon.""A Doctor?""Well, a teacher.""Professor Square-the-circle-till-you're-tired?Hold on, there's something I don't think of nowThat I had on my mind to ask the firstMan that knew anything I happened in with.I'll ask you later—don't let me forget it."The Doctor looked at Lafe and looked away.A man? A brute. Naked above the waist,He sat there creased and shining in the light,Fumbling the buttons in a well-starched shirt."I'm moving into a size-larger shirt.I've felt mean lately; mean's no name for it.I just found what the matter was to-night:I've been a-choking like a nursery treeWhen it outgrows the wide band of its name tag.I blamed it on the hot spell we've been having.'Twas nothing but my foolish hanging back,Not liking to own up I'd grown a size.Number eighteen this is. What size do you wear?"The Doctor caught his throat convulsively."Oh—ah—fourteen—fourteen.""Fourteen! You say so!I can remember when I wore fourteen.And come to think I must have back at homeMore than a hundred collars, size fourteen.Too bad to waste them all. You ought to have them.They're yours and welcome; let me send them toyou.What makes you stand there on one leg like that?You're not much furtherer than where Kike left you,You act as if you wished you hadn't come.Sit down or lie down friend; you make me nervous."The Doctor made a subdued dash for it,And propped himself at bay against a pillow."Not that way, with your shoes on Kike's whitebed.You can't rest that way. Let me pull your shoesoff.""Don't touch me, please—I say, don't touch me,please.I'll not be put to bed by you, my man.""Just as you say. Have it your own way then.'My man' is it? You talk like a professor.Speaking of who's afraid of who, however,I'm thinking I have more to lose than youIf anything should happen to be wrong.Who wants to cut your number fourteen throat!Let's have a show down as an evidenceOf good faith. There is ninety dollars.Come, if you're not afraid.""I'm not afraid.There's five: that's all I carry.""I can search you?Where are you moving over to? Stay still.You'd better tuck your money under youAnd sleep on it the way I always doWhen I'm with people I don't trust at night.""Will you believe me if I put it thereRight on the counterpane—that I do trust you?""You'd say so, Mister Man.—I'm a collector.My ninety isn't mine—you won't think that.I pick it up a dollar at a timeAll round the country for theWeekly News,Published in Bow. You know theWeekly News?""Known it since I was young.""Then you know me.Now we are getting on together—talking.I'm sort of Something for it at the front.My business is to find what people want:They pay for it, and so they ought to have it.Fairbanks, he says to me—he's editor—Feel out the public sentiment—he says.A good deal comes on me when all is said.The only trouble is we disagreeIn politics: I'm Vermont Democrat—You know what that is, sort of double-dyed;TheNewshas always been Republican.Fairbanks, he says to me, 'Help us this year,'Meaning by us their ticket. 'No,' I says,'I can't and won't. You've been in long enough:It's time you turned around and boosted us.You'll have to pay me more than ten a weekIf I'm expected to elect Bill Taft.I doubt if I could do it anyway.'""You seem to shape the paper's policy.""You see I'm in with everybody, know 'em all.I almost know their farms as well as they do.""You drive around? It must be pleasant work.""It's business, but I can't say it's not fun.What I like best's the lay of different farms,Coming out on them from a stretch of woods,Or over a hill or round a sudden corner.I like to find folks getting out in spring,Raking the dooryard, working near the house.Later they get out further in the fields.Everything's shut sometimes except the barn;The family's all away in some back meadow.There's a hay load a-coming—when it comes.And later still they all get driven in:The fields are stripped to lawn, the garden patchesStripped to bare ground, the apple treesTo whips and poles. There's nobody about.The chimney, though, keeps up a good brisksmoking.And I lie back and ride. I take the reinsOnly when someone's coming, and the mareStops when she likes: I tell her when to go.I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one.She's got so she turns in at every houseAs if she had some sort of curvature,No matter if I have no errand there.She thinks I'm sociable. I maybe am.It's seldom I get down except for meals, though.Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep,All in a family row down to the youngest.""One would suppose they might not be as gladTo see you as you are to see them.""Oh,Because I want their dollar. I don't wantAnything they've not got. I never dun.I'm there, and they can pay me if they like.I go nowhere on purpose: I happen by.Sorry there is no cup to give you a drink.I drink out of the bottle—not your style.Mayn't I offer you——?""No, no, no, thank you."Just as you say. Here's looking at you then.—And now I'm leaving you a little while.You'll rest easier when I'm gone, perhaps—Lie down—let yourself go and get some sleep.But first—let's see—what was I going to ask you?Those collars—who shall I address them to,Suppose you aren't awake when I come back?""Really, friend, I can't let you. You—may needthem.""Not till I shrink, when they'll be out of style.""But really—I have so many collars.""I don't know who I rather would have have them.They're only turning yellow where they are.But you're the doctor as the saying is.I'll put the light out. Don't you wait for me:I've just begun the night. You get some sleep.I'll knock so-fashion and peep round the doorWhen I come back so you'll know who it is.There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.I don't want you should shoot me in the head.What am I doing carrying off this bottle?There now, you get some sleep."He shut the doorThe Doctor slid a little down the pillow.
"You ought to have seen what I saw on my wayTo 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 drumIn the cavernous pail of the first one to come!And all ripe together, not some of them greenAnd 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 mesee—It was two years ago—or no!—can it beNo longer than that?—and the following fallThe fire ran and burned it all up but the wall.""Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes togrow.That's always the way with the blueberries, though:There may not have been the ghost of a signOf them anywhere under the shade of the pine,But get the pine out of the way, you may burnThe pasture all over until not a fernOr grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,And presto, they're up all around you as thickAnd hard to explain as a conjurer'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 aretanned.""Does Mortenson know what he has, do youthink?""He may and not care and so leave the chewinkTo gather them for him—you know what he is.He won't make the fact that they're rightfully hisAn 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 showAnd over the wall and into the road,When who should come by, with a democrat-loadOf all the young chattering Lorens alive,But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive.""He saw you, then? What did he do? Did hefrown?""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 hiseye—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, theysay,Like birds. They store a great many away.They eat them the year round, and those theydon't eatThey 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 themturned,And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned.""I wish I knew half what the flock of them knowOf where all the berries and other things grow,Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on topOf the boulder-strewn mountain, and when theywill crop.I met them one day and each had a flowerStuck 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 mirthBy going to him of all people on earthTo ask if he knew any fruit to be hadFor the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be gladTo tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.Therehadbeen some berries—but those were allgone.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,Marne,wedon'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 bewet.It's so long since I picked I almost forgetHow we used to pick berries: we took one lookround,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 birdAway from its nest, and I said it was you.'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flewAround and around us. And then for a whileWe picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shoutToo loud for the distance you were, it turned out,For when you made answer, your voice was as lowAs talking—you stood up beside me, you know.""We shan'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 rightTo pick where they're picking. But we won'tcomplain.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."
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 had onAnd blew him out on the icy crustThat cased the world, and he was gone!Walls were all buried, trees were few:He saw no stay unless he stoveA hole in somewhere with his heel.But though repeatedly he stroveAnd stamped and said things to himself,And sometimes something seemed to yield,He gained no foothold, but pursuedHis journey down from field to field.Sometimes he came with arms outspreadLike wings, revolving in the sceneUpon his longer axis, andWith no small dignity of mien.Faster or slower as he chanced,Sitting or standing as he chose,According as he feared to riskHis neck, or thought to spare his clothes,He never let the lantern drop.And some exclaimed who saw afarThe figures he described with it,"I wonder what those signals areBrown makes at such an hour of night!He's celebrating something strange.I wonder if he's sold his farm,Or been made Master of the Grange."He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;He fell and made the lantern rattle(But saved the light from going out).So half-way down he fought the battleIncredulous of his own bad luck.And then becoming reconciledTo everything, he gave it upAnd came down like a coasting child."Well—I—be——" that was all he said,As standing in the river road,He looked back up the slippery slope(Two miles it was) to his abode.Sometimes as an authorityOn motor-cars, I'm asked if IShould say our stock was petered out,And this is my sincere reply:Yankees are what they always were.Don't think Brown ever gave up hopeOf getting home again becauseHe couldn't climb that slippery slope;Or even thought of standing thereUntil the January thawShould take the polish off the crust.He bowed with grace to natural law,And then went round it on his feet,After the manner of our stock;Not much concerned for those to whom,At that particular time o'clock,It must have looked as if the courseHe steered was really straight awayFrom that which he was headed for—Not much concerned for them, I say.But now he snapped his eyes three times;Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's'Bout out!" and took the long way homeBy road, a matter of several miles.
We make ourselves a place apartBehind light words that tease and flout,But oh, the agitated heartTill someone really find us out.A pity if the case require(Or so we say) that in the endWe speak the literal to inspireThe understanding of a friend.But so with all, from babes that playAt hide-and-seek to God afar,So all who hide too well awayMust speak and tell us where they are.
When the wind works against us in the dark,And pelts with snowThe lower chamber window on the east,And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,The beast,"Come out! Come out!"—It costs no inward struggle not to go,Ah, do!I count our strength,Two and a child,Those of us not asleep subdued to markHow the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—How drifts are piled,Dooryard and road ungraded,Till even the comforting barn grows far away,And my heart owns a doubtWhether 'tis in us to arise with dayAnd save ourselves unaided.
Love has earth to which she clingsWith hills and circling arms about—Wall within wall to shut fear out.But Thought has need of no such things,For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.On snow and sand and turf, I seeWhere Love has left a printed traceWith straining in the world's embrace.And such is Love and glad to be.But thought has shaken his ankles free.Thought cleaves the interstellar gloomAnd sits in Sirius' disc all night,Till day makes him retrace his flight,With smell of burning on every plume,Back past the sun to an earthly room.His gains in heaven are what they are.Yet some say Love by being thrallAnd simply staying possesses allIn several beauty that Thought fares farTo find fused in another star.
I left you in the morning,And in the morning glow,You walked a way beside meTo make me sad to go.Do you know me in the gloaming,Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?Are you dumb because you know me not,Or dumb because you know?All for me? And not a questionFor the faded flowers gayThat could take me from beside youFor the ages of a day?They are yours, and be the measureOf their worth for you to treasure,The measure of the little whileThat I've been long away.
Out through the fields and the woodsAnd over the walls I have wended;I have climbed the hills of viewAnd looked at the world, and descended;I have come by the highway home,And lo, it is ended.The leaves are all dead on the ground,Save those that the oak is keepingTo ravel them one by oneAnd let them go scraping and creepingOut over the crusted snow,When others are sleeping.And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,No longer blown hither and thither;The last lone aster is gone;The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;The heart is still aching to seek,But the feet question "Whither?"Ah, when to the heart of manWas it ever less than a treasonTo go with the drift of things,To yield with a grace to reason,And bow and accept the endOf a love or a season?
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,But stretched away unto the edge of doom.I should not be withheld but that some dayInto their vastness I should steal away,Fearless of ever finding open land,Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.I do not see why I should e'er turn back,Or those should not set forth upon my trackTo overtake me, who should miss me hereAnd long to know if still I held them dear.They would not find me changed from him theyknew—Only more sure of all I thought was true.