FIRE AND ICE by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) OME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
HOUSE FEAR by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) LWAYS--I tell you this they learned--
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.
A LATE WALK by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) HEN I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch 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.
THE LOCKLESS DOOR by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) T went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock. I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door. But the knock came again
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside. Back over the sill
I bade a “Come in”
To whoever the knock
At the door may have been. So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.
MY NOVEMBER GUEST by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) Y Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist. The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) HE had no saying dark enough
For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window latch
Of the room where they slept. The tireless but ineffectual hands
That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
Before the mystery of glass! It never had been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
Of what the tree might do.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) WO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. STORM FEAR by: Robert Frost (1874-1963) HEN the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
'Come out! Come out!'--
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,--
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided
A Soldier
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
A Question
A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
