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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mountain Interval, by Robert Frost

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Title: Mountain Interval

Author: Robert Frost

Release Date: July 7, 2009 [EBook #29345]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOUNTAIN INTERVAL ***




Produced by David Starner, Katherine Ward and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







ROBERT FROST
From the original in plaster by Aroldo Du Chêne
Copyright, Henry Holt and Company

MOUNTAIN INTERVAL

BY
ROBERT FROST

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1916, 1921
by

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY


May, 1931

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.

TO YOU
who least need reminding

that before this interval of the South Branch under black mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth, where we walked in spring beyond the covered bridge; but that the first interval of all was the old farm, our brook interval, so called by the man we had it from in sale.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 9 CHRISTMAS TREES 11 AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT 14 A PATCH OF OLD SNOW 15 IN THE HOME STRETCH 16 THE TELEPHONE 24 MEETING AND PASSING 25 HYLA BROOK 26 THE OVEN BIRD 27 BOND AND FREE 28 BIRCHES 29 PEA BRUSH 31 PUTTING IN THE SEED 32 A TIME TO TALK 33 THE COW IN APPLE TIME 34 AN ENCOUNTER 35 RANGE-FINDING 36 THE HILL WIFE 37 I LONELINESS––HER WORD 37 II HOUSE FEAR 37 III THE SMILE––HER WORD 38 IV THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM 38 V THE IMPULSE 39 THE BONFIRE 41 A GIRL’S GARDEN 45 THE EXPOSED NEST 48 “OUT, OUT––” 50 BROWN’S DESCENT OR THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE 52 THE GUM-GATHERER 56 THE LINE-GANG 58 THE VANISHING RED 59 SNOW 61 THE SOUND OF THE TREES 75
9 THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

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.

11 CHRISTMAS TREES

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods––the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

12

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine,

I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

 

“You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north.

 

He said, “A thousand.”

 

“A thousand Christmas trees!––at what apiece?”

 

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

 

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

13

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

14 AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT

All out of doors looked darkly in at him

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him––at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping there, he scared it once again

In clomping off;––and scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

So late-arising, to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man––one man––can’t fill a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

15 A PATCH OF OLD SNOW

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner

That I should have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

Had brought to rest.

 

It is speckled with grime as if

Small print overspread it,

The news of a day I’ve forgotten––

If I ever read it.

16 IN THE HOME STRETCH

She stood against the kitchen sink, and looked

Over the sink out through a dusty window

At 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 people

In 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 face

Looked in a door behind her and addressed

Her back. She always answered without turning.

 

“Where will I put this walnut bureau, lady?”

“Put it on top of something that’s on top

Of something else,” she laughed. “Oh, put it where

You can to-night, and go. It’s almost dark;

You must be getting started back to town.”

Another blackened face thrust in and looked

And smiled, and when she did not turn, spoke gently,

“What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

 

“Never was I beladied so before.

Would evidence of having been called lady

More than so many times make me a lady

In common law, I wonder.”

 

17

“But I ask,

What are you seeing out the window, lady?”

 

“What I’ll be seeing more of in the years

To come as here I stand and go the round

Of many plates with towels many times.”

 

“And what is that? You only put me off.”

 

“Rank weeds that love the water from the dish-pan

More than some women like the dish-pan, Joe;

A little stretch of mowing-field for you;

Not much of that until I come to woods

That end all. And it’s scarce enough to call

A view.”

 

“And yet you think you like it, dear?”

 

“That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope

I like it. Bang goes something big away

Off there upstairs. The very tread of men

As great as those is shattering to the frame

Of such a little house. Once left alone,

You and I, dear, will go with softer steps

Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none

But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands

Will ever slam the doors.”

 

“I think you see

More 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 go

In alternation with the weeds, the field,

The wood.”

 

18

“What kind of years?”

“Why, latter years––

Different from early years.”

“I see them, too.

You didn’t count them?”

“No, the further off

So ran together that

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