Robert Frost

Loneliness
(Her Word)

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
  
 With whatever it is they sing;

The truth being we are as much
  
 Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here—
 With birds that fill their breasts

But with each other and themselves
  
 And their built or driven nests.

House Fear

Always-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.

The Smile
(Her Word)

I didn't like the way he went away.

That smile! It never came of being gay.

Still he smiled-did you see him?-I was sure!

Perhaps because we gave him only bread

And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.

Perhaps because he let us give instead

Of seizing from us as he might have seized.

Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,

Or being very young (and he was pleased

To have a vision of us old and dead).

I wonder how far down the road he's got.

He's watching from the woods as like as not.

The Oft-Repeated Dream

She 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 Impulse

It was too lonely for her there,
  
 And too wild,

And since there were but two of them,
  
 And no child,

And work was little in the house,
  
 She was free,

And followed where he furrowed field,
  
 Or felled tree.

She rested on a log and tossed
  
 The fresh chips,

With a song only to herself
  
 On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough
  
 Of black alder.

She strayed so far she scarcely heard
  
 When he called her-

And didn't answer—didn't speak—

 Or return.

She stood, and then she ran and hid
  
 In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
  
 Everywhere,

And he asked at her mother's house
  
 Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that
  
 The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities
  
 Besides the grave.