Robert Frost   
   
The Ax-helve
Fire and Ice
The Flower Boat
For Once, Then, Something
Fragmentary Blue
Good-by and Keep Cold
The Lockless Door
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things
Not to Keep
Place for a Third
Plowmen
The Runaway
To E.T.
The Valley’s Singing Day
Wild Grapes

1. The Ax-helve   
   
(From The Atlantic Monthly, September 1917.)   
   
   
I’VE known ere now an interfering branch      
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.      
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand      
From striking at another alder’s roots,      
And that was, as I say, an alder branch.           5   
This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day      
Behind me on the snow in my own yard      
Where I was working at the chopping-block,      
And cutting nothing not cut down already.      
He caught my ax expertly on the rise,           10   
When all my strength put forth was in his favor,      
Held it a moment where it was, to calm me,      
Then took it from me—and I let him take it.      
I didn’t know him well enough to know      
What it was all about. There might be something           15   
He had in mind to say to a bad neighbor      
He might prefer to say to him disarmed.      
But all he had to tell me in French-English      
Was what he thought of—not me, but my ax,      
Me only as I took my ax to heart.           20   
It was the bad ax-helve someone had sold me—      
“Made on machine,” he said, plowing the grain      
With a think thumbnail to show how it ran      
Across the handle’s long-drawn serpentine—      
Like the two strokes across a dollar sign.           25   
“You give her one good crack, she’s snap raght off.      
Den where’s your hax-ead flying t’rough de hair?”      
Admitted; and yet, what was that to him?      
   
“Come on my house and I put you one in      
What’s las’ awhile—good hick’ry what’s grow crooked.           30   
De second growt’ I cut myself—tough, tough!”      
   
Something to sell? That wasn’t how it sounded.      
   
“Den when you say you come? It’s cost you nothing.      
Tonaght?      
   
As well tonight as any night.           35   
   
Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove      
My welcome differed from no other welcome.      
Baptiste knew best why I was where I was.      
So long as he would leave enough unsaid,      
I shouldn’t mind his being overjoyed           40   
(If overjoyed he was) at having got me      
Where I must judge if what he knew about an ax      
That not everybody else knew was to count      
For nothing in the measure of a neighbor.      
Hard if, though cast away for life ’mid Yankees,           45   
A Frenchman couldn’t get his human rating!      
   
Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair      
That had as many motions as the world:      
One back and forward, in and out of shadow,      
That got her nowhere; one more gradual,           50   
Sideways, that would have run her on the stove      
In time, had she not realized her danger      
And caught herself up bodily, chair and all,      
And set herself back where she started from.      
“She ain’t spick too much Henglish—dat’s too bad.”           55   
I was afraid, in brightening first on me,      
Then on Baptiste, as if she understood      
What passed between us, she was only feigning.      
Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more      
Than for himself, so placed he couldn’t hope           60   
To keep his bargain of the morning with me      
In time to keep me from suspecting him      
Of really never having meant to keep it.      
   
Needlessly soon he had his ax-helves out,      
A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me           65   
To have the best he had, or had to spare—      
Not for me to ask which, when what he took      
Had beauties he had to point me out at length      
To insure their not being wasted on me.      
He liked to have it slender as a whipstock,           70   
Free from the least knot, equal to the strain      
Of bending like a sword across the knee.      
He showed me that the lines of a good helve      
Were native to the grain before the knife      
Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves           75   
Put on it from without. And there its strength lay      
For the hard work. He chafed its long white body      
From end to end with his rough hand shut round it.      
He tried it at the eye-hole in the ax-head.      
“Hahn, hahn,” he mused, “don’t need much taking down.”           80   
Baptiste knew how to make a short job long      
For love of it, and yet not waste time either.      
   
Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge?      
Baptiste on his defense about the children      
He kept from school, or did his best to keep—           85   
Whatever school and children and our doubts      
Of laid-on education had to do      
With the curves of his ax-helves and his having      
Used these unscrupulously to bring me      
To see for once the inside of his house.           90   
Was I desired in friendship, partly as someone      
To leave it to, whether the right to hold      
Such doubts of education should depend      
Upon the education of those who held them?      
   
But now he brushed the shavings from his knee           95   
And stood the ax there on its horse’s hoof,      
Erect, but not without its waves, as when      
The snake stood up for evil in the Garden,—      
Top-heavy with a heaviness his short,      
Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down           100   
And in a little—a French touch in that.      
Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased;      
“See how she’s cock her head!”      

2. Fire and Ice   
   
(From Harper’s Magazine, December 1920.)   
   
   
SOME say the world will end in fire,      
Some say in ice.      
From what I’ve tasted of desire      
I hold with those who favor fire.      
But if it had to perish twice,           5   
I think I know enough of hate      
To know that for destruction ice      
Is also great      
And would suffice.      

3. The Flower Boat   
   
(From The Youth’s Companion, May 20, 1909.)   
   
   
THE FISHERMAN’S swapping a yarn for a yarn      
Under the hand of the village barber,      
And here in the angle of house and barn      
His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.      
   
At anchor she rides the sunny sod           5   
As full to the gunnel with flowers a-growing      
As ever she turned her home with cod      
From George’s Bank when winds were blowing.      
   
And I know from that Elysian freight      
She will brave but once more the Atlantic weather,           10   
When dory and fisherman sail by fate      
To seek for the Happy Isles together.

4. For Once, Then, Something   
   
(From Harper’s Magazine, July 1920.)   
   
   
OTHERS taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs      
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing      
Deeper down in the well than where the water      
Gives me back in a shining surface picture      
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike           5   
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.      
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,      
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,      
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,      
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.           10   
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.      
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple      
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,      
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?      
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.           15   

   
5. Fragmentary Blue   
   
(From Harper’s Magazine, July 1920.)   
   
   
WHY make so much of fragmentary blue      
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,      
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,      
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?      
   
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—           5   
Though some savants make earth include the sky;      
And blue so far above us comes so high,      
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.      

6. Good-by and Keep Cold   
   
(From Harper’s Magazine, July 1920.)   
   
   
THIS saying good-by on the edge of the dark      
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark      
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm      
An orchard away at the end of the farm      
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.           5   
I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,      
I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse      
By deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.      
(If certain it wouldn’t be idle to call      
I’d summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall           10   
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)      
I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.      
(We made it secure against being, I hope,      
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)      
No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;           15   
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.      
“How often already you’ve had to be told,      
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.      
Dread fifty above more than fifty below.”      
I have to be gone for a season or so.           20   
My business awhile is with different trees,      
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,      
And such as is done to their wood with an ax—      
Maples and birches and tamaracks.      
I wish I could promise to lie in the night           25   
And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight      
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)      
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.      
But something has to be left to God.

7. The Lockless Door   
    
(From A Miscellany of American Poetry 1920 [New York, 1920].)   
    
    
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,           5   
I tip-toed the floor,      
And raised both hands      
In prayer to the door.      
    
But the knock came again      
My window was wide;           10   
I climbed on the sill      
And descended outside.      
    
Back over the sill      
I bade a “Come in”      
To whoever the knock           15   
At the door may have been.      
    
So at a knock      
I emptied my cage      
To hide in the world      
And alter with age.           20   
 

8. The Need of Being Versed in Country Things   
   
(From Harper’s Magazine, December 1920.)   
   
   
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,           5   
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           10   
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           15   
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.           20   
   
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.      

9. Not to Keep   
   
(From The Yale Review, January 1917.)   
   
   
THEY sent him back to her. The letter came      
Saying… And she could have him. And before      
She could be sure there was no hidden ill      
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,      
Living. They gave him back to her alive—           5   
How else? They are not known to send the dead—      
And not disfigured visibly. His face?      
His hands? She had to look, and ask,      
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all      
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!           10   
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,      
And all the rest for them permissible ease.      
She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”      
   
“Enough,      
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,           15   
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care      
And medicine and rest, and you a week,      
Can cure me of to go again.” The same      
Grim giving to do over for them both.      
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes           20   
How was it with him for a second trial.      
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.      
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.