Download Robert Frost Poems: The Tuft of Flowers and Mending Wall and more Exams Poetry in PDF only on Docsity!
The Tuft of Flowers – by 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 levelled 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 feel 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.'
Mending Wall – Robert Frost
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 pass 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 neighbor 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 balls
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 neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? 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 neighbors."
After Apple Picking – by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep.
