Poetry      

Mending Wall
                by Robert Frost - 1914

                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 neighbor 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 neighbors'.
                Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
                If I could put a notion in his head:
                'Why do they make good neighbors? 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 offense.
                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 neighbors."


 

Good Hours
                     by Robert Frost - 1914

                     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.


 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
                      by Robert Frost - 1923

                      Whose woods these are I think I know.
                      His house is in the village though;
                      He will not see me stopping here
                      To watch his woods fill up with snow.

                      My little horse must think it queer
                      To stop without a farmhouse near
                      Between the woods and frozen lake
                      The darkest evening of the year.

                      He gives his harness bells a shake
                      To ask if there is some mistake.
                      The only other sound's the sweep
                      Of easy wind and downy flake.

                      The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
                      But I have promises to keep,
                      And miles to go before I sleep,
                      And miles to go before I sleep.


 

[Forgive, O Lord...]
                     by Robert Frost - 1962
 

                     Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
                     And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
 


 
              The Road not Taken
                                 by Robert Frost - 1916

                     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.