Journey 2 Being

— Robert Frost

TWO fairies it was
   On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
   With the flowers to play.

The flowers the plucked
   They cast on the ground
For others, and those
   For still others they found.

Flower-guided it was
   That they came as they ran
On something that lay
   In the shape of a man.

The snow must have made
   The feathery bed
When this one fell
   On the sleep of the dead.

But the snow was gone
   
   A long time ago,

And the body he wore
   
   Nigh gone with the snow.

The fairies drew near
   
   And keenly espied

A ring on his hand
   
   And a chain at his side.



They knelt in the leaves
   
   And eerily played

With the glittering things,
   
   And were not afraid.



And when they went home
   
   To hide in their burrow,

They took them along
   
   To play with to-morrow.



When you came on death,
   
   Did you not come flower-guided

Like the elves in the wood?
   
   I remember that I did.



But I recognised death
   
   With sorrow and dread,

And I hated and hate
   
   The spoils of the dead.

— Robert Frost

I WENT to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it 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 isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
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
On noiseless wing a ’wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o’er 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 eye 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 fell 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 work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

— Robert Frost

THUS of old the Douglas did:
He left his land as he was bid
With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce
In a golden case with a golden lid,

To carry the same to the Holy Land;
By which we see and understand
That that was the place to carry a heart
At loyalty and love’s command,

And that was the case to carry it in.
The Douglas had not far to win
Before he came to the land of Spain,
Where long a holy war had been

Against the too-victorious Moor;
And there his courage could not endure
Not to strike a blow for God
Before he made his errand sure.

And ever it was intended so,
That a man for God should strike a blow,
No matter the heart he has in charge
For the Holy Land where hearts should go.

But when in battle the foe were met,
The Douglas found him sore beset,
With only strength of the fighting arm
For one more battle passage yet—

And that as vain to save the day
As bring his body safe away—
Only a signal deed to do
And a last sounding word to say.

The heart he wore in a golden chain
He swung and flung forth into the plain,
And followed it crying ‘Heart or death!’
And fighting over it perished fain.

So may another do of right,
Give a heart to the hopeless fight,
The more of right the more he loves;
So may another redouble might

For a few swift gleams of the angry brand,
Scorning greatly not to demand
In equal sacrifice with his
The heart he bore to the Holy Land.

— Robert Frost

EVEN the bravest that are slain
   Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
   Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
   Wide fields of asphodel fore’er,
To find that the utmost reward
   Of daring should be still to dare.
 
The light of heaven falls whole and white
   And is not shattered into dyes,
The light for ever is morning light;
   The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angel hosts with freshness go,
   And seek with laughter what to brave;—
And binding all is the hushed snow
   Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
   The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
   The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
   In streams and cross- and counter-streams
Can but give ear to that sweet cry
For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned
   To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
   Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
   Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
   Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,
   Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
   Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
   And tenderly, life’s little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
   Setting the thing that is supreme.

Nor is there wanting in the press
   Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in its nakedness,
   Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth’s unhonored things
   Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
   And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:
   ’One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
   The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
   Admits no memory of choice,
Or the woe were not earthly woe
   To which you give the assenting voice.’

And so the choice must be again,
   But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
   And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
   And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
   Spirit to matter till death come.

’Tis of the essence of life here,
   Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
   That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
   Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
   Bearing it crushed and mystified.

— Robert Frost

WE make ourselves a place apart

   Behind light words that tease and flout,

But oh, the agitated heart

   Till someone find us really out.

’Tis pity if the case require

   (Or so we say) that in the end

We speak the literal to inspire

   The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play

   At hide-and-seek to God afar,

So all who hide too well away

   Must speak and tell us where they are.

— Robert Frost

THE WELL was dry beside the door,

   And so we went with pail and can

Across the fields behind the house

   To seek the brook if still it ran;

Not loth to have excuse to go,

   Because the autumn eve was fair

(Though chill), because the fields were ours,

   And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon

   That slowly dawned behind the trees,

The barren boughs without the leaves,

   Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused

   Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,

Ready to run to hiding new

   With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand

   To listen ere we dared to look,

And in the hush we joined to make

   We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,

   A slender tinkling fall that made

Now drops that floated on the pool

   Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

— Robert Frost

THERE was never a sound beside the wood but one,

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;

Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—

And that was why it whispered and did not speak.

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,

Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,

Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers

(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

— Robert Frost

IF tired of trees I seek again mankind,

   Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,

   To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.

There amid lolling juniper reclined,

Myself unseen, I see in white defined

   Far off the homes of men, and farther still,

   The graves of men on an opposing hill,

Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by moon I have too much of these,

   I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,

   The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,

My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,

   I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,

   I look into the crater of the ant.

— Robert Frost

THEY leave us so to the way we took,

   As two in whom they were proved mistaken,

That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,

With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,

   And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

— Robert Frost

I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song

Was swallowed up in leaves that blew always;

And to the forest edge you came one day

(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,

But did not enter, though the wish was strong:

You shook your pensive head as who should say,

‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—

He must seek me would he undo the wrong.

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all

Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;

And the sweet pang it cost me not to call

And tell you that I saw does still abide.

But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,

For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.