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

lady
    More than so many times make me a lady
    In common law, I wonder.”
     
    “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.”
     
    “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 I didn’t try to.
    It can scarce be that they would be in number
    We’d care to know, for we are not young now.
    And bang goes something else away off there.
    It sounds as if it were the men went down,
    And every crash meant one less to return
    To lighted city streets we, too, have known,
    But now are giving up for country darkness.”
     
    “Come from that window where you see too much for me,
    And take a livelier view of things from here.
    They’re going. Watch this husky swarming up
    Over the wheel into the sky-high seat,
    Lighting his pipe now, squinting down his nose
    At the flame burning downward as he sucks it.”
     
    “See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof
    How dark it’s getting. Can you tell what time
    It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!
    What shoulder did I see her over? Neither.
    A wire she is of silver, as new as we
    To everything. Her light won’t last us long.
    It’s something, though, to know we’re going to have her
    Night after night and stronger every night
    To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,
    The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;
    Ask them to help you get it on its feet.
    We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!”
     
    “They’re not gone yet.”
     
    “We’ve got to have the stove,
    Whatever else we want for. And a light.
    Have we a piece of candle if the lamp
    And oil are buried out of reach?”
     
    Again
    The house was full of tramping, and the dark,
    Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove.
    A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall,
    To which they set it true by eye; and then
    Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands,
    So much too light and airy for their strength
    It almost seemed to come ballooning up,
    Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling.
    “A fit!” said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder.
    “It’s good luck when you move in to begin
    With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind,
    It’s not so bad in the country, settled down,
    When people’re getting on in life. You’ll like it.”
    Joe said: “You big boys ought to find a farm,
    And make good farmers, and leave other fellows
    The city work to do. There’s not enough
    For everybody as it is in there.”
    “God!” one said wildly, and, when no one spoke:
    “Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm.”
    But Jimmy only made his jaw recede
    Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say
    He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy
    Who said with seriousness that made them laugh,
    “Ma friend, you ain’t know what it is