Written by
Robert Frost |
A NEIGHBOR of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load.
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!
It's as when I was a farmer--"
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
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Written by
John Gould Fletcher |
I
Like a gaunt, scraggly pine
Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills;
And patiently, through dull years of bitter silence,
Untended and uncared for, starts to grow.
Ungainly, labouring, huge,
The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches;
Yet in the heat of midsummer days, when thunderclouds ring the horizon,
A nation of men shall rest beneath its shade.
And it shall protect them all,
Hold everyone safe there, watching aloof in silence;
Until at last one mad stray bolt from the zenith
Shall strike it in an instant down to earth.
II
There was a darkness in this man; an immense and hollow darkness,
Of which we may not speak, nor share with him, nor enter;
A darkness through which strong roots stretched downwards into the earth
Towards old things:
Towards the herdman-kings who walked the earth and spoke with God,
Towards the wanderers who sought for they knew not what, and found their goal
at last;
Towards the men who waited, only waited patiently when all seemed lost,
Many bitter winters of defeat;
Down to the granite of patience
These roots swept, knotted fibrous roots, prying, piercing, seeking,
And drew from the living rock and the living waters about it
The red sap to carry upwards to the sun.
Not proud, but humble,
Only to serve and pass on, to endure to the end through service;
For the ax is laid at the roots of the trees, and all that bring not forth
good fruit
Shall be cut down on the day to come and cast into the fire.
III
There is a silence abroad in the land to-day,
And in the hearts of men, a deep and anxious silence;
And, because we are still at last, those bronze lips slowly open,
Those hollow and weary eyes take on a gleam of light.
Slowly a patient, firm-syllabled voice cuts through the endless silence
Like labouring oxen that drag a plow through the chaos of rude clay-fields:
"I went forward as the light goes forward in early spring,
But there were also many things which I left behind.
"Tombs that were quiet;
One, of a mother, whose brief light went out in the darkness,
One, of a loved one, the snow on whose grave is long falling,
One, only of a child, but it was mine.
"Have you forgot your graves? Go, question them in anguish,
Listen long to their unstirred lips. From your hostages to silence,
Learn there is no life without death, no dawn without sun-setting,
No victory but to him who has given all."
IV
The clamour of cannon dies down, the furnace-mouth of the battle is silent.
The midwinter sun dips and descends, the earth takes on afresh
its bright colours.
But he whom we mocked and obeyed not, he whom we scorned and mistrusted,
He has descended, like a god, to his rest.
Over the uproar of cities,
Over the million intricate threads of life wavering and crossing,
In the midst of problems we know not, tangling, perplexing, ensnaring,
Rises one white tomb alone.
Beam over it, stars,
Wrap it round, stripes -- stripes red for the pain that he bore for you --
Enfold it forever, O flag, rent, soiled, but repaired through your anguish;
Long as you keep him there safe, the nations shall bow to your law.
Strew over him flowers:
Blue forget-me-nots from the north, and the bright pink arbutus
From the east, and from the west rich orange blossom,
And from the heart of the land take the passion-flower;
Rayed, violet, dim,
With the nails that pierced, the cross that he bore and the circlet,
And beside it there lay also one lonely snow-white magnolia,
Bitter for remembrance of the healing which has passed.
|
Written by
Robert Frost |
Now that they've got it settled whose I be,
I'm going to tell them something they won't like:
They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.
Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting
To make a present of me to each other.
They don't dispose me, either one of them,
To spare them any trouble. Double trouble's
Always the witch's motto anyway.
I'll double theirs for both of them-you watch me.
They'll find they've got the whole thing to do over,
That is, if facts is what they want to go by.
They set a lot (now don't they?) by a record
Of Arthur Amy's having once been up
For Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren.
I could have told them any time this twelvemonth
The Arthur Amy I was married to
Couldn't have been the one they say was up
In Warren at March Meeting, for the reason
He wa'n't but fifteen at the time they say.
The Arthur Amy I was married to
Voted the only times he ever voted,
Which wasn't many, in the town of Wentworth.
One of the times was when 'twas in the warrant
To see if the town wanted to take over
The tote road to our clearing where we lived.
I'll tell you who'd remember-Heman Lapish.
Their Arthur Amy was the father of mine.
So now they've dragged it through the law courts once
I guess they'd better drag it through again.
Wentworth and Warren's both good towns to live in,
Only I happen to prefer to live
In Wentworth from now on; and when all's said,
Right's right, and the temptation to do right
When I can hurt someone by doing it
Has always been too much for me, it has.
I know of some folks that'd be set up
At having in their town a noted witch:
But most would have to think of the expense
That even I would be. They ought to know
That as a witch I'd often milk a bat
And that'd be enough to last for days.
It'd make my position stronger, think,
If I was to consent to give some sign
To make it surer that I was a witch?
It wa'n't no sign, I s'pose, when Mallice Huse
Said that I took him out in his old age
And rode all over everything on him
Until I'd bad him worn to skin and bones
And if I'd left him bitched unblanketed
In front of one Town Hall, I'd left him hitched
front of every one in Grafton County.
Some cried shame on me not to blanket him,
The poor old man. It would have been all right
If someone hadn't said to gnaw the posts
He stood beside and leave his trademark on them,
So they could recognize them. Not a post
That they could hear tell of was scarified.
They made him keep on gnawing till he whined.
Then that same smarty someone said to look
He'd bet Huse was a cribber and bad gnawed
The crib he slept in-and as sure's you're born
They found he'd gnawed the four posts of his bed,
All four of them to splinters. What did that prove?
Not that he hadn't gnawed the hitching posts
He said he had, besides. Because a horse
Gnaws in the stable ain't no proof to me
He don't gnaw trees and posts and fences too.
But everybody took it for a proof.
I was a strapping girl of twenty then.
The smarty someone who spoiled everything
Was Arthur Amy. You know who he was.
That was the way he started courting me.
He never said much after we were married,
But I mistrusted be was none too proud
Of having interfered in the Huse business.
I guess be found he got more out of me
By having me a witch. Or something happened
To turn him round. He got to saying things
To undo what he'd done and make it right,
Like, "No, she ain't come back from kiting yet.
Last night was one of her nights out. She's kiting.
She thinks when the wind makes a night of it
She might as well herself." But he liked best
To let on he was plagued to death with me:
If anyone had seen me coming home
Over the ridgepole, ' stride of a broomstick,
As often as he had in the tail of the night,
He guessed they'd know what he had to put up with.
Well, I showed Arthur Amy signs enough
Off from the house as far as we could keep
And from barn smells you can't wash out of plowed ground
With all the rain and snow of seven years;
And I don't mean just skulls of Rogers' Rangers
On Moosilauke, but woman signs to man,
Only bewitched so I would last him longer.
Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall,
I made him gather me wet snowberries
On slippery rocks beside a waterfall.
I made him do it for me in the dark.
And he liked everything I made him do.
I hope if he is where he sees me now
He's so far off be can't see what I've come to.
You can come down from everything to nothing.
All is, if I'd a-known when I was young
And full of it, that this would be the end,
It doesn't seem as if I'd had the courage
To make so free and kick up in folks' faces.
I might have, but it doesn't seem as if.
|
Written by
D. H. Lawrence |
I
Dunna thee tell me its his'n, mother,
Dunna thee, dunna thee.
--Oh ay! he'll be comin' to tell thee his-sèn
Wench, wunna he?
Tha doesna mean to say to me, mother,
He's gone wi that--
--My gel, owt'll do for a man i' the dark,
Tha's got it flat.
But 'er's old, mother, 'er's twenty year
Older nor him--
--Ay, an' yaller as a crowflower, an' yet i' the dark
Er'd do for Tim.
Tha niver believes it, mother, does ter?
It's somebody's lies.
--Ax him thy-sèn wench--a widder's lodger;
It's no surprise.
II
A widow of forty-five
With a bitter, swarthy skin,
To ha' 'ticed a lad o' twenty-five
An' 'im to have been took in!
A widow of forty-five
As has sludged like a horse all her life,
Till 'er's tough as whit-leather, to slive
Atween a lad an' 'is wife!
A widow of forty-five.
A tough old otchel wi' long
Witch teeth, an' 'er black hawk-eyes as I've
Mistrusted all along!
An' me as 'as kep my-sen
Shut like a daisy bud,
Clean an' new an' nice, so's when
He wed he'd ha'e summat good!
An' 'im as nice an' fresh
As any man i' the force,
To ha'e gone an' given his white young flesh
To a woman that coarse!
III
You're stout to brave this snow, Miss Stainwright,
Are you makin' Brinsley way?
--I'm off up th' line to Underwood
Wi' a dress as is wanted to-day.
Oh are you goin' to Underwood?
'Appen then you've 'eered?
--What's that as 'appen I've 'eered-on, Missis,
Speak up, you nedna be feared.
Why, your young man an' Widow Naylor,
Her as he lodges wi',
They say he's got her wi' childt; but there,
It's nothing to do wi' me.
Though if it's true they'll turn him out
O' th' p'lice force, without fail;
An' if it's not true, I'd back my life
They'll listen to _her_ tale.
Well, I'm believin' no tale, Missis,
I'm seein' for my-sen;
An' when I know for sure, Missis,
I'll talk _then_.
IV
Nay robin red-breast, tha nedna
Sit noddin' thy head at me;
My breast's as red as thine, I reckon,
Flayed red, if tha could but see.
Nay, you blessed pee-whips,
You nedna screet at me!
I'm screetin' my-sen, but are-na goin'
To let iv'rybody see.
Tha _art_ smock-ravelled, bunny,
Larropin' neck an' crop
I' th' snow: but I's warrant thee, bunny,
_I'm_ further ower th' top.
V
Now sithee theer at th' railroad crossin'
Warmin' his-sen at the stool o' fire
Under the tank as fills the ingines,
If there isn't my dearly-beloved liar!
My constable wi' 'is buttoned breast
As stout as the truth, my sirs!--An' 'is face
As bold as a robin! It's much he cares
For this nice old shame and disgrace.
Oh but he drops his flag when 'e sees me,
Yes, an' 'is face goes white ... oh yes
Tha can stare at me wi' thy fierce blue eyes,
But tha doesna stare me out, I guess!
VI
Whativer brings thee out so far
In a' this depth o' snow?
--I'm takin' 'ome a weddin' dress
If tha maun know.
Why, is there a weddin' at Underwood,
As tha ne'd trudge up here?
--It's Widow Naylor's weddin'-dress,
An' 'er's wantin it, I hear.
_'Er_ doesna want no weddin-dress ...
What--but what dost mean?
--Doesn't ter know what I mean, Tim?--Yi,
Tha must' a' been hard to wean!
Tha'rt a good-un at suckin-in yet, Timmy;
But tell me, isn't it true
As 'er'll be wantin' _my_ weddin' dress
In a week or two?
Tha's no occasions ter ha'e me on
Lizzie--what's done is done!
--_Done_, I should think so--Done! But might
I ask when tha begun?
It's thee as 'as done it as much as me,
Lizzie, I tell thee that.
--"Me gotten a childt to thy landlady--!"
Tha's gotten thy answer pat,
As tha allers hast--but let me tell thee
Hasna ter sent me whoam, when I
Was a'most burstin' mad o' my-sen
An' walkin' in agony;
After thy kisses, Lizzie, after
Tha's lain right up to me Lizzie, an' melted
Into me, melted into me, Lizzie,
Till I was verily swelted.
An' if my landlady seed me like it,
An' if 'er clawkin', tiger's eyes
Went through me just as the light went out
Is it any cause for surprise?
No cause for surprise at all, my lad,
After lickin' and snuffin' at me, tha could
Turn thy mouth on a woman like her--
Did ter find her good?
Ay, I did, but afterwards
I should like to ha' killed her!
--Afterwards!--an' after how long
Wor it tha'd liked to 'a killed her?
Say no more, Liz, dunna thee,
I might lose my-sen.
--I'll only say good-bye to thee, Timothy,
An' gi'e her thee back again.
I'll ta'e thy word 'Good-bye,' Liz,
But I shonna marry her,
I shonna for nobody.--It is
Very nice on you, Sir.
The childt maun ta'e its luck, it maun,
An' she maun ta'e _her_ luck,
For I tell ye I shonna marry her--
What her's got, her took.
That's spoken like a man, Timmy,
That's spoken like a man ...
"He up an' fired off his pistol
An' then away he ran."
I damn well shanna marry 'er,
So chew at it no more,
Or I'll chuck the flamin' lot of you--
--You nedn't have swore.
VII
That's his collar round the candle-stick
An' that's the dark blue tie I bought 'im,
An' these is the woman's kids he's so fond on,
An' 'ere comes the cat that caught 'im.
I dunno where his eyes was--a gret
Round-shouldered hag! My sirs, to think
Of him stoopin' to her! You'd wonder he could
Throw hisself in that sink.
I expect you know who I am, Mrs Naylor!
--Who yer are?--yis, you're Lizzie Stainwright.
'An 'appen you might guess what I've come for?
--'Appen I mightn't, 'appen I might.
You knowed as I was courtin' Tim Merfin.
--Yis, I knowed 'e wor courtin' thee.
An' yet you've been carryin' on wi' him.
--Ay, an' 'im wi' me.
Well, now you've got to pay for it,
--An' if I han, what's that to thee?
For 'e isn't goin' to marry you.
--Is it a toss-up 'twixt thee an' me?
It's no toss-up 'twixt thee an' me.
--Then what art colleyfoglin' for?
I'm not havin' your orts an' slarts.
--Which on us said you wor?
I want you to know 'e's non _marryin'_ you.
--Tha wants 'im thy-sen too bad.
Though I'll see as 'e pays you, an' comes to the scratch.
--Tha'rt for doin' a lot wi' th' lad.
VIII
To think I should ha'e to haffle an' caffle
Wi' a woman, an' pay 'er a price
For lettin' me marry the lad as I thought
To marry wi' cabs an' rice.
But we'll go unbeknown to the registrar,
An' give _'er_ what money there is,
For I won't be beholden to such as her
For anythink of his.
IX
Take off thy duty stripes, Tim,
An' come wi' me in here,
Ta'e off thy p'lice-man's helmet
An' look me clear.
I wish tha hadna done it, Tim,
I do, an' that I do!
For whenever I look thee i' th' face, I s'll see
Her face too.
I wish tha could wesh 'er off'n thee,
For I used to think that thy
Face was the finest thing that iver
Met my eye....
X
Twenty pound o' thy own tha hast, and fifty pound ha'e I,
Thine shall go to pay the woman, an' wi' my bit we'll buy
All as we shall want for furniture when tha leaves this place,
An' we'll be married at th' registrar--now lift thy face.
Lift thy face an' look at me, man, up an' look at me:
Sorry I am for this business, an' sorry if I ha'e driven thee
To such a thing: but it's a poor tale, that I'm bound to say,
Before I can ta'e thee I've got a widow of forty-five to pay.
Dunnat thee think but what I love thee--I love thee well,
But 'deed an' I wish as this tale o' thine wor niver my tale to tell;
Deed an' I wish as I could stood at the altar wi' thee an' been proud
o' thee,
That I could ha' been first woman to thee, as thou'rt first man to me.
But we maun ma'e the best on't--I'll rear thy childt if 'er'll yield
it to me,
An' then wi' that twenty pound we gi'e 'er I s'd think 'er wunna be
So very much worser off than 'er wor before--An' now look up
An' answer me--for I've said my say, an' there's no more sorrow to sup.
Yi, tha'rt a man, tha'rt a fine big man, but niver a baby had eyes
As sulky an' ormin' as thine. Hast owt to say otherwise
From what I've arranged wi' thee? Eh man, what a stubborn jackass thou
art,
Kiss me then--there!--ne'er mind if I scraight--I wor fond o' thee,
Sweetheart.
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