Poems of Robert Frost. Large Collection, includes A Boy's Will, North of Boston and Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

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
    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.

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.

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.

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