Robert Frost 1

Birches For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon
When I see birches bend to left and right And so not carrying the tree away
Across the lines of straighter darker trees, Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise 35
I like to think some boy's been swinging them. To the top branches, climbing carefully
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay With the same pains you use to fill a cup
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them 5 Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
After a rain. They click upon themselves Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. 40
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. And so I dream of going back to be.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells 10 It's when I'm weary of considerations,
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— And life is too much like a pathless wood
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs 45
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, From a twig's having lashed across it open.
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 15 I'd like to get away from earth awhile
So low for long, they never right themselves: And then come back to it and begin over.
You may see their trunks arching in the woods May no fate willfully misunderstand me 50
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. 20 I don't know where it's likely to go better.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk 55
I should prefer to have some boy bend them Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
As he went out and in to fetch the cows— But dipped its top and set me down again.
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, 25 That would be good both going and coming back.
Whose only play was what he found himself, One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them, 30 Listen to Frost read “Birches”
And not one but hung limp, not one was left http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBw-OaOWddY
 Robert Frost 2

A Prayer in Spring The Tuft of Flowers

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; I went to turn the grass once after one
And give us not to think so far away Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, 5
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; I looked for him behind an isle of trees; 5
And make us happy in the happy bees, I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And make us happy in the darting bird And I must be, as he had been—alone,
That suddenly above the bees is heard, 10
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, “As all must be,” I said within my heart,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still. “Whether they work together or apart.” 10

For this is love and nothing else is love, But as I said it, swift there passed me by
The which it is reserved for God above On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,
To sanctify to what far ends He will, 15
But which it only needs that we fulfil. Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round, 15

As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,

And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,

And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; 20
 Robert Frost 3

But he turned first, and led my eye to look Two Tramps in Mud Time
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
Out of the mud two strangers came
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I left my place to know them by their name, 25 I knew pretty well why he dropped behind 5
Finding them butterfly weed when I came. And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
The mower in the dew had loved them thus, He wanted to take my job for pay.
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Good blocks of beech it was I split,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. As large around as the chopping block; 10
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim. 30 And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The butterfly and I had lit upon, The blows that a life of self-control
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul, 15
That made me hear the wakening birds around, I spent on the unimportant wood.
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
And feel a spirit kindred to my own; 35 You know how it is with an April day
So that henceforth I worked no more alone; When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May. 20
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, But if you so much as dare to speak,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade; A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach. 40
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight 25
“Men work together,” I told him from the heart, And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume
“Whether they work together or apart.” His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
 Robert Frost 4

It is snowing a flake: and he half knew Nothing on either side was said.
Winter was only playing possum. 30 They knew they had but to stay their stay
Except in color he isn’t blue, And all their logic would fill my head:
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom. As that I had no right to play 60
With what was another man’s work for gain.
The water for which we may have to look My right might be love but theirs was need.
In summertime with a witching wand, And where the two exist in twain
In every wheel rut’s now a brook, 35 Theirs was the better right — agreed.
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget But yield who will to their separation, 65
The lurking frost in the earth beneath My object in living is to unite
That will steal forth after the sun is set My avocation and my vocation
And show on the water its crystal teeth. 40 As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
The time when most I loved my task And the work is play for mortal stakes, 70
These two must make me love it more Is the deed ever really done
By coming with what they came to ask. For heaven and the future’s sakes.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft, 45
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the woods two hulking tramps

(From sleeping God knows where last night, 50
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax, 55
They had no way of knowing a fool.