 THE PASTURE by Robert Frost readforlibrivox.org by Becky Crackle November 16th, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio I'm going out to clean the pasture spring. I'll only stop to rake the leaves away and wait to watch the water clear, I may. I shan't be gone long. You come, too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf that's standing by the mother. It's so young. It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I shan't be gone long. You come, too. End of THE PASTURE This recording is in the public domain. Home Burial by Robert Frost readforlibrivox.org by Becky Crackle November 16th, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio He saw her from the bottom of the stairs before she saw him. She was starting down, looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it to raise herself and look again. He spoke, advancing toward her. What is it you see from up there always? For I want to know. She turned and sank upon her skirts at that, and her face changed from terrified to dull. He said to gain time. What is it you see? Mounting until she cowered under him. I will find out now. You must tell me, dear. She, in her place, refused him any help with the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see, blind creature, and a while he didn't see. But at last he murmured, oh, and again, oh. What is it? What? She said. Just that I see. You don't, she challenged. Tell me what it is. The wonder is, I didn't see it at once. I never noticed it from here before. I must be wanted to it. That's the reason. The little graveyard where my people are. So small, the window frames the whole of it. Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it? There are three stones of slate and one of marble. Brogdon. They're in the sunlight on the side hill. We haven't to mind those. But I understand it is not the stones. But the child's mound. Don't, don't, don't, don't! She cried. She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm that rested on the banister and slid downstairs and turned on him with such a daunting look. He said twice over before he knew himself. Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost? Not you! Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it. I must get out of here. I must get air. I don't know rightly whether any man can. Amy, don't go to someone else this time. Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs. He sat and fixed his chin between his fists. There's something I should like to ask you, dear. You don't know how to ask it. Help me, then. Her fingers moved the latch for all reply. My words are nearly always an offence. I don't know how to speak of anything so as to please you. But I might be taught I should suppose. I can't say I see how. A man must partly give up being a man with women folk. We could have some arrangement by which I'd bind myself to keep hands off anything special you're a mind to name. Though I don't like such things, tweaks those that love. Two that don't love can't live together without them. But two that do can't live together with them. She moved the latch a little. Don't go. Don't carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it's something human. Let me into your grief. I'm not so much unlike other folks as your standing there apart would make me out. Give me my chance. I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think at the thing to take your mother loss of a first child so inconsolably in the face of love? You'd think his memory might be satisfied. There you go, sneering now. I'm not. I'm not. You make me angry. I'll come down to you. God, what a woman! And it's come to this, a man can't speak of his own child that's dead. You can't, because you don't know how. If you had any feelings, you that dug with your own hand, how could you, his little grave? I saw you from that very window there, making the gravel leap and leap in air, leap up like that, like that, and roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs to look again and still your spain kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice out in the kitchen, and I don't know why. But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave, and talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall, outside there in the entry, for I saw it. I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed. I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed! I can repeat the very words you were saying. Three foggy mornings and one rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can build. Think of it. Talk like that at such a time. What had how long it takes a birch to rot, to do with what was in the darkened parlor? You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go with anyone to death. Come so far short, they might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time one is sick to death, one is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretense of following to the grave. But before one is in it their minds are churned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand. But the world's evil. I won't have grief so if I can change it. Oh, I won't! I won't! There, you have said it all and you feel better. You won't go now. You're crying, close the door. The heart's gone out of it. Why keep it up? Amy, there's someone coming down the road. You! Oh, you think the talk is all! I must go, somewhere out of this house. How can I make you? If you do! She was opening the door wider. Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will! End of home burial. This recording is in the public domain. The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost Read for LibriVox.org by Becky Crackle November 16, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio I went to turn the grass once after one who moated in the dew before the sun. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen before I came to view the leveled scene. I looked for him behind an aisle of trees. I listened for his wet stone on the breeze. But he had gone his way, the grass all moan, and I must be as he had been, alone. As all must be, I said within my heart, whether they work together or apart. But as I said it, Swift there passed me by a noiseless wing, a wildered butterfly, seeking with memories grown dim or night some resting flower of yesterday's delight. And once I marked his flight go round and round as where some flower lay withering on the ground. And then he flew as far as I 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. But he turned first and led my eye to look at a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook. A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared. I left my place to know them by their name, finding them butterfly weed when I came. The mower in the dew had loved them thus by leaving them to flourish, not for us, nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him, but from sheer morning gladness at the brim. The butterfly and I had lit upon nevertheless a message from the dawn that made me hear the wakening birds around and hear his long scythe whispering to the ground and feel a spirit kindred to my own so that henceforth I worked no more alone. But glad with him I worked as with his aid and weary sought at noon with him the shade. And dreaming as it were held brotherly speech with one whose thought I had not hoped to reach. Men worked together I told him from the heart whether they worked together or apart. End of the Tuft of Flowers This recording is in the public domain Mending Wall by Robert Frost readforlibrevox.org by Becky Crackle November 16, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio Something there is that doesn't love a wall that sends the frozen ground swell under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun and makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing I have come after them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone but they would have the rabbit out of hiding to please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean no one has seen them made or heard them made them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill and on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go to each the boulders that have fallen to each and some are loaves and some are so nearly balls we have to use a spell to make them balance stay where you are until our backs are turned we wear our fingers rough with handling them oh just another kind of outdoor game one on a side it comes to little more there where it is we do not need the wall he is all pine and I am apple orchard my apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines I tell him he only says good fences make good neighbors spring is the mischief in me and I wonder if I could put a notion why do they make good neighbors isn't it where there are cows but here there are no cows before I built a wall I'd asked to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give a fence something there is that doesn't love a wall that wants it down I could say elves to him but it's not elves exactly and I'd rather he said it for himself I see him there stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand like an old stone savage armed he moves in darkness as it seems to me not of woods only and the shade of trees he will not go behind his father's saying and he likes having thought of it so well he says again good fences make good neighbors end of mending wall this recording is in the public domain birches by Robert Frost readforlibrivox.org by Becky Crackle November 16, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio when I see birches bend to left and right across the lines of straight or darker trees I like to think some boys bend swinging them but swinging doesn't bend them down to stay ice storms do that often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain they click upon themselves as the breeze rises and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells shattering and avalanching on the snow crust such heaps of broken glass to sweep away you'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen they are dragged to the withered rackened by the load and they seem not to break though once they are bowed for so long they never write themselves you may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterwards trailing their leaves on the ground like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun but I was going to say when truth broke in with all her matter of fact about the ice storm now am I free to be poetical? I should prefer to have some boy bend them as he went out and in to fetch the cows some boy too far from town to learn baseball whose only play was what he found himself 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 and not one but hung limp not one was left for him to conquer he learned all there was to learn about not launching out too soon and so not carrying the tree away clear to the ground he always kept his poise to the top branches climbing carefully with the same pains you use to fill a cup up to the brim and even above the brim then he flung outward feet first with a swish kicking his way down through the air to the ground so was I once myself a swinger of birches and so I dream of going back to be it's when I'm weary of considerations and life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it and one eye is weeping from a twigs having lashed across it open I'd like to get away from earth awhile and then come back to it and begin over in no fate willfully misunderstand me in half grant what I wish and snatch me away not to return earth's the right place for love I don't know where it's likely to go better I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree and climb black branches up a snow white trunk toward heaven till the tree could bear no more but dipped its top and set me down again that would be good both going and coming back one could do worse than be a swinger of birches this recording is in the public domain Reluctance by Robert Frost readforlibrivox.org by Becky Crackle November 16th 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio out through the fields and the woods and over the walls I have wended I have climbed the hills of view and looked at the world and descended I have come by the highway home and lo it is ended the leaves are all dead on the ground save those that the oak is keeping to ravel them one by one and let them go scraping and creeping out over the crusted snow when others are sleeping and the dead leaves lie huddled and still longer blown hither and thither the last lone aster is gone the flowers of the witch hazel wither the heart is still aching to seek but the feet question wither when to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason to go with the drift of things to yield with a grace to reason and bow and accept the end of a love or a season and of reluctance this recording is in the public domain a late walk by Robert Frost read for LibriVox.org by Becky Crackle November 16, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio when I go up through the mowing field the headless aftermath smooth laid like that with the heavy dew half closes the garden path and when I come to the garden ground the whir of sober birds up from the tangle of withered weeds is sadder than any words a tree beside the wall stands bare but a leaf that lingered brown, disturbed I doubt not by my thought comes softly rattling down I end not far from my going forth by picking the faded blue of the last remaining aster flower to carry again to you this recording is in the public domain fragmentary blue by Robert Frost read for LibriVox.org by Becky Crackle November 16, 2006 Canal Winchester, Ohio why make so much of fragmentary blue in here and there a bird or butterfly or flower or wearing stone fly when heaven presents in sheets the solid hue since earth is earth perhaps not heaven as yet though some savants make earth include the sky and blue so far above us comes so high it only gives our wish for blue a wet this recording is in the public domain