North of Boston Part 1

North of Boston.

by Robert Frost.

THE PASTURE

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 sha'n'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 sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.

Mending Wall

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 pa.s.s 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, But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour 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 so nearly b.a.l.l.s 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 out-door 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 neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence.

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 Bringing a 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 neighbours."

The Death of the Hired Man

MARY sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step, She ran on tip-toe down the darkened pa.s.sage To meet him in the doorway with the news And put him on his guard. "Silas is back."

She pushed him outward with her through the door And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said.

She took the market things from Warren's arms And set them on the porch, then drew him down To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

"When was I ever anything but kind to him?

But I'll not have the fellow back," he said.

"I told him so last haying, didn't I?

'If he left then,' I said, 'that ended it.'

What good is he? Who else will harbour him At his age for the little he can do?

What help he is there's no depending on.

Off he goes always when I need him most.

'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay, Enough at least to buy tobacco with, So he won't have to beg and be beholden.'

'All right,' I say, 'I can't afford to pay Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.'

'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will have to.'

I shouldn't mind his bettering himself If that was what it was. You can be certain, When he begins like that, there's someone at him Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,-- In haying time, when any help is scarce.

In winter he comes back to us. I'm done."

"s.h.!.+ not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said.

"I want him to: he'll have to soon or late."

"He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove.

When I came up from Rowe's I found him here, Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep, A miserable sight, and frightening, too-- You needn't smile--I didn't recognise him-- I wasn't looking for him--and he's changed.

Wait till you see."

"Where did you say he'd been?"

"He didn't say. I dragged him to the house, And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.

I tried to make him talk about his travels.

Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off."

"What did he say? Did he say anything?"

"But little."

"Anything? Mary, confess He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me."

"Warren!"

"But did he? I just want to know."

"Of course he did. What would you have him say?

Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man Some humble way to save his self-respect.

He added, if you really care to know, He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.

That sounds like something you have heard before?

Warren, I wish you could have heard the way He jumbled everything. I stopped to look Two or three times--he made me feel so queer-- To see if he was talking in his sleep.

He ran on Harold Wilson--you remember-- The boy you had in haying four years since.

He's finished school, and teaching in his college.

Silas declares you'll have to get him back.

He says they two will make a team for work: Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!

The way he mixed that in with other things.

He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft On education--you know how they fought All through July under the blazing sun, Silas up on the cart to build the load, Harold along beside to pitch it on."

"Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot."

"Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.

You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger!

Harold's young college boy's a.s.surance piqued him.

After so many years he still keeps finding Good arguments he sees he might have used.

I sympathise. I know just how it feels To think of the right thing to say too late.

Harold's a.s.sociated in his mind with Latin.

He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying He studied Latin like the violin Because he liked it--that an argument!

He said he couldn't make the boy believe He could find water with a hazel p.r.o.ng-- Which showed how much good school had ever done him.

He wanted to go over that. But most of all He thinks if he could have another chance To teach him how to build a load of hay----"

"I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.

He bundles every forkful in its place, And tags and numbers it for future reference, So he can find and easily dislodge it In the unloading. Silas does that well.

He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests.

You never see him standing on the hay He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself."

"He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be Some good perhaps to someone in the world.

He hates to see a boy the fool of books.

Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk, And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope, So now and never any different."

Part of a moon was falling down the west, Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.

Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw And spread her ap.r.o.n to it. She put out her hand Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, As if she played unheard the tenderness That wrought on him beside her in the night.

"Warren," she said, "he has come home to die: You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time."

"Home," he mocked gently.

"Yes, what else but home?

It all depends on what you mean by home.

Of course he's nothing to us, any more Than was the hound that came a stranger to us Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail."