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Mending Wall The Death of the Hired Man The Mountain A Hundred Collars Home Burial The Black Cottage Blueberries A Servant to Servants After Apple-picking The Code The Generations of Men The Housekeeper The Fear The Self-seeker The Wood-pile Good Hours

Mending Wall

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

The Death of the Hired Man

The Mountain

A Hundred Collars

Home Burial

The Black Cottage

Blueberries

A Servant to Servants

After Apple-picking

MY long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear. My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep.

The Code

THERE were three in the meadow by the brook Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, With an eye always lifted toward the west Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. The town-bred farmer failed to understand. "What is 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 over Before 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 out something. The hand that knows his business won't be told To 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's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing 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 wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work Out of his hired help. I'm not denying He was hard on himself. I couldn't find That 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 behind And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing-- Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks . I'd been watching him. So when he paired off with me in the hayfield To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble. I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders Combed it down with a rake and says, 'O. K.' Everything went well till we reached the barn With a big catch to empty in a bay. You understand that meant the easy job For the man up on top of throwing down The 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 urging Under these 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 you said?' 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 soon Murdered 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 for Like meditating, and then I just dug in And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots. I looked over the side once in the dust And 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 realized from the way I swobbed my neck More 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 temple Before I buried him, or I couldn't have managed. They excavated more. 'Go keep his wife Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a window, And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchen Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. He looked so clean disgusted from behind There 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 ; but my just trying To 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 out After 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 discharge you?" "Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right."

The Generations of Men

The Housekeeper

The Fear

The Self-seeker

The Wood-pile

OUT walking in the frozen swamp one grey 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 down. 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 grey 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 labour of his axe, 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.

Good Hours

I HAD for my winter evening walk-- No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms and youthful faces. I had such company outward bound. I went till there were no cottages found. I turned and repented, but coming back I saw no window but that was black. Over the snow my creaking feet Disturbed the slumbering village street Like profanation, by your leave, At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

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