9. The Oven Bird   
   
   
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 flowers      
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.           5   
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.           10   
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.      

   
10. Bond and Free   
   
   
LOVE has earth to which she clings      
With 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.           5   
   
On snow and sand and turf, I see      
Where Love has left a printed trace      
With straining in the world’s embrace.      
And such is Love and glad to be.      
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.           10   
   
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom      
And 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.           15   
   
His gains in heaven are what they are.      
Yet some say Love by being thrall      
And simply staying possesses all      
In several beauty that Thought fares far      
To find fused in another star.           20

11. Birches   
   
   
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right      
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,      
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.      
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.      
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them           5   
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning      
After a rain. They click upon themselves      
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored      
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.      
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells           10   
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—      
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away      
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.      
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,      
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed           15   
So low for long, they never right themselves:      
You may see their trunks arching in the woods      
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground      
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair      
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.           20   
But I was going to say when Truth broke in      
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm      
(Now am I free to be poetical?)      
I should prefer to have some boy bend them      
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—           25   
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,      
Whose only play was what he found himself,      
Summer or winter, and could play alone.      
One by one he subdued his father’s trees      
By riding them down over and over again           30   
Until he took the stiffness out of them,      
And not one but hung limp, not one was left      
For him to conquer. He learned all there was      
To learn about not launching out too soon      
And so not carrying the tree away           35   
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise      
To the top branches, climbing carefully      
With the same pains you use to fill a cup      
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.      
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,           40   
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.      
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.      
And so I dream of going back to be.      
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,      
And life is too much like a pathless wood           45   
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs      
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping      
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.      
I’d like to get away from earth awhile      
And then come back to it and begin over.           50   
May no fate willfully misunderstand me      
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away      
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:      
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.      
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,           55   
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk      
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,      
But dipped its top and set me down again.      
That would be good both going and coming back.      
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.           60

12. Pea Brush   
   
   
I WALKED down alone Sunday after church      
  To the place where John has been cutting trees      
To see for myself about the birch      
  He said I could have to bush my peas.      
   
The sun in the new-cut narrow gap           5   
  Was hot enough for the first of May,      
And stifling hot with the odor of sap      
  From stumps still bleeding their life away.      
   
The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill      
  Wherever the ground was low and wet,           10   
The minute they heard my step went still      
  To watch me and see what I came to get.      
   
Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—      
  All fresh and sound from the recent axe.      
Time someone came with cart and pair           15   
  And got them off the wild flower’s backs.      
   
They might be good for garden things      
  To curl a little finger round,      
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,      
  And lift themselves up off the ground.           20   
   
Small good to anything growing wild,      
  They were crooking many a trillium      
That had budded before the boughs were piled      
  And since it was coming up had to come.      

13. Putting in the Seed   
   
   
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,           5   
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           10   
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.      

14. A Time to Talk   
   
   
WHEN a friend calls to me from the road      
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,      
I don’t stand still and look around      
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,      
And shout from where I am, What is it?           5   
No, not as there is a time to talk.      
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,      
Blade-end up and five feet tall,      
And plod: I go up to the stone wall      
For a friendly visit.           10

15. The Cow in Apple Time   
   
   
SOMETHING inspires the only cow of late      
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,      
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.      
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools      
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,           5   
She scores a pasture withering to the root.      
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten      
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.      
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.      
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.           10   
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.      

   
16. An Encounter   
   
   
ONCE on the kind of day called “weather breeder,”      
When the heat slowly hazes and the sun      
By its own power seems to be undone,      
I was half boring through, half climbing through      
A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar           5   
And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,      
And sorry I ever left the road I knew,      
I paused and rested on a sort of hook      
That had me by the coat as good as seated,      
And since there was no other way to look,           10   
Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,      
Stood over me a resurrected tree,      
A tree that had been down and raised again—      
A barkless spectre. He had halted too,      
As if for fear of treading upon me.           15   
I saw the strange position of his hands—      
Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands      
Of wire with something in it from men to men.      
“You here?” I said. “Where aren’t you nowadays      
And what’s the news you carry—if you know?           20   
And tell me where you’re off for—Montreal?      
Me? I’m not off for anywhere at all.      
Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways      
Half looking for the orchid Calypso.”      

17. Range-finding   
   
   
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.           5   
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           10   
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.      

18. The Hill Wife   
   
   
LONELINESS
(Her Word)

ONE ought not to have to care      
  So much as you and I      
Care when the birds come round the house      
  To seem to say good-bye;      
   
Or care so much when they come back           5   
  With whatever it is they sing;      
The truth being we are as much      
  Too glad for the one thing      
   
As we are too sad for the other here—      
  With birds that fill their breasts           10   
But with each other and themselves      
  And their built or driven nests.      
   
HOUSE FEAR

Always—I tell you this they learned—      
Always at night when they returned      
To the lonely house from far away           15   
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,      
They learned to rattle the lock and key      
To give whatever might chance to be      
Warning and time to be off in flight:      
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,           20   
They learned to leave the house-door wide      
Until they had lit the lamp inside.      
   
THE SMILE
(Her Word)

I didn’t like the way he went away.      
That smile! It never came of being gay.      
Still he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure!           25   
Perhaps because we gave him only bread      
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.      
Perhaps because he let us give instead      
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.      
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,           30   
Or being very young (and he was pleased      
To have a vision of us old and dead).      
I wonder how far down the road he’s got.      
He’s watching from the woods as like as not.      
   
THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough           35   
  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           40   
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           45   
  Of what the tree might do.      
   
THE IMPULSE

It was too lonely for her there,      
  And too wild,      
And since there were but two of them,      
  And no child,           50   
   
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           55   
  The fresh chips,      
With a song only to herself      
  On her lips.      
   
And once she went to break a bough      
  Of black alder.           60   
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           65   
  In the fern.      
   
He never found her, though he looked      
  Everywhere,      
And he asked at her mother’s house      
  Was she there.           70   
   
Sudden and swift and light as that      
  The ties gave,      
And he learned of finalities      
  Besides the grave.