One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come back...
I let myself in at the kitchen door. "It's you," she said. "I can't get up. Forgive me Not answering your knock. I can no more Let people in than I can keep them out....
Over back where they speak of life as staying ('You couldn't call it living, for it ain't'), There was an old, old house renewed with paint, And in it a piano loudly playing. ...
Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.
There's a place called Far-away Meadow We never shall mow in again, Or such is the talk at the farmhouse: The meadow is finished with men. Then now is the chance for the flowers...
Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread....
The mountain held the town as in a shadow I saw so much before I slept there once: I noticed that I missed stars in the west, Where its black body cut into the sky. Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall...
The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood, Like a pistil after the petals go.
Always the same, when on a fated night At last the gathered snow lets down as white As may be in dark woods, and with a song It shall not make again all winter long Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,...
There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers...
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.
Two 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; ...
The rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But now the theory goes That the apple's a rose, And the pear is, and so's The plum, I suppose. The dear only knows What will next prove a rose....
Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, 'Whose colt?' A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head...
"Willis, I didn't want you here to-day: The lawyer's coming for the company. I'm going to sell my soul, or, rather, feet. Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know."...
She is as in a field of silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease, And its supporting central cedar pole,...
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. If we who sight along it round the world,...