Part 5

"See how it makes his nose-side bright, a proof How dark it's getting. Can you tell what time It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon! What shoulder did I see her over? Neither. A wire she is of silver, as new as we To everything. Her light won't last us long. It's something, though, to know we're going to have her Night after night and stronger every night To see us through our first two weeks. But, Joe, The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window; Ask them to help you get it on its feet. We stand here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!"

"They're not gone yet."

"We've got to have the stove, Whatever else we want for. And a light. Have we a piece of candle if the lamp And oil are buried out of reach?"

Again The house was full of tramping, and the dark, Door-filling men burst in and seized the stove. A cannon-mouth-like hole was in the wall, To which they set it true by eye; and then Came up the jointed stovepipe in their hands, So much too light and airy for their strength It almost seemed to come ballooning up, Slipping from clumsy clutches toward the ceiling. "A fit!" said one, and banged a stovepipe shoulder. "It's good luck when you move in to begin With good luck with your stovepipe. Never mind, It's not so bad in the country, settled down, When people 're getting on in life. You'll like it." Joe said: "You big boys ought to find a farm, And make good farmers, and leave other fellows The city work to do. There's not enough For everybody as it is in there." "God!" one said wildly, and, when no one spoke: "Say that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm." But Jimmy only made his jaw recede Fool-like, and rolled his eyes as if to say He saw himself a farmer. Then there was a French boy Who said with seriousness that made them laugh, "Ma friend, you ain't know what it is you're ask." He doffed his cap and held it with both hands Across his chest to make as 'twere a bow: "We're giving you our chances on de farm." And then they all turned to with deafening boots And put each other bodily out of the house. "Goodby to them! We puzzle them. They think—- I don't know what they think we see in what They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems The back some farm presents us; and your woods To northward from your window at the sink, Waiting to steal a step on us whenever We drop our eyes or turn to other things, As in the game 'Ten-step' the children play."

"Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city. All they could say was 'God!' when you proposed Their coming out and making useful farmers."

"Did they make something lonesome go through you? It would take more than them to sicken you—- Us of our bargain. But they left us so As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with. They almost shook _me._"

"It's all so much What we have always wanted, I confess It's seeming bad for a moment makes it seem Even worse still, and so on down, down, down. It's nothing; it's their leaving us at dusk. I never bore it well when people went. The first night after guests have gone, the house Seems haunted or exposed. I always take A personal interest in the locking up At bedtime; but the strangeness soon wears off." He fetched a dingy lantern from behind A door. "There's that we didn't lose! And these!" Some matches he unpocketed. "For food—- The meals we've had no one can take from us. I wish that everything on earth were just As certain as the meals we've had. I wish The meals we haven't had were, anyway. What have you you know where to lay your hands on?"

"The bread we bought in passing at the store. There's butter somewhere, too."

"Let's rend the bread. I'll light the fire for company for you; You'll not have any other company Till Ed begins to get out on a Sunday To look us over and give us his idea Of what wants pruning, shingling, breaking up. He'll know what he would do if he were we, And all at once. He'll plan for us and plan To help us, but he'll take it out in planning. Well, you can set the table with the loaf. Let's see you find your loaf. I'll light the fire. I like chairs occupying other chairs Not offering a lady—-"

"There again, Joe! _You're tired._"

"I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out; Don't mind a word I say. It's a day's work To empty one house of all household goods And fill another with 'em fifteen miles away, Although you do no more than dump them down."

"Dumped down in paradise we are and happy."

"It's all so much what I have always wanted, I can't believe it's what you wanted, too."

"Shouldn't you like to know?"

"I'd like to know If it is what you wanted, then how much You wanted it for me."

"A troubled conscience! You don't want me to tell if _I_ don't know."

"I don't want to find out what can't be known. But who first said the word to come?"

My dear, It's who first thought the thought. You're searching, Joe, For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—-there are no such things. There are only middles."

"What is this?"

"This life? Our sitting here by lantern-light together Amid the wreckage of a former home? You won't deny the lantern isn't new. The stove is not, and you are not to me, Nor I to you."

"Perhaps you never were?"

"It would take me forever to recite All that's not new in where we find ourselves. New is a word for fools in towns who think Style upon style in dress and thought at last Must get somewhere. I've heard you say as much. No, this is no beginning."

"Then an end?"

"End is a gloomy word."

"Is it too late To drag you out for just a good-night call On the old peach trees on the knoll to grope By starlight in the grass for a last peach The neighbors may not have taken as their right When the house wasn't lived in? I've been looking: I doubt if they have left us many grapes. Before we set ourselves to right the house, The first thing in the morning, out we go To go the round of apple, cherry, peach, Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook. All of a farm it is."

"I know this much: I'm going to put you in your bed, if first I have to make you build it. Come, the light."

When there was no more lantern in the kitchen, The fire got out through crannies in the stove And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling, As much at home as if they'd always danced there.

VI

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, 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.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.

THE OVEN BIRD

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 Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.

A VANTAGE POINT

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 most to mind.

And if by noon 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.

THE SOUND OF TREES

I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing, As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometimes when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.

HYLA BROOK

By June our brook's run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground (And taken with it all the Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—- Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed, Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent Even against the way its waters went. Its bed is left a faded paper sheet Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—- A brook to none but who remember long. This as it will be seen is other far Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song. We love the things we love for what they are.

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My 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 grey 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.

RANGE-FINDING

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

OCTOBER

O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow, Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know; Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away; Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes' sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—- For the grapes' sake along the wall.

TO THE THAWING WIND

Come with rain, O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; Make the settled snow-bank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But whate'er you do to-night, Bathe my window, make it flow, Melt it as the ice will go; Melt the glass and leave the sticks Like a hermit's crucifix; Burst into my narrow stall; Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o'er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door.

VII

A TIME TO TALK

When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk I don't stand still and look around On all the hills I haven't hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit.

THE CODE

There were three in the meadow by the brook Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, With an eye always lifted toward the west Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. The town-bred farmer failed to understand.

"What was there wrong?"

"Something you just now said."

"What did I say?"

"About our taking pains.

"To cock the hay?—-because it's going to shower? I said that more than half an hour ago. I said it to myself as much as you."

"You didn't know. But James is one big fool. He thought you meant to find fault with his work. That's what the average farmer would have meant. James would take time, of course, to chew it over Before he acted: he's just got round to act."

"He is a fool if that's the way he takes me."

"Don't let it bother you. You've found out something. The hand that knows his business won't be told To do work better or faster—-those two things. I'm as particular as anyone: Most likely I'd have served you just the same. But I know you don't understand our ways. You were just talking what was in your mind, What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting.

Tell you a story of what happened once: I was up here in Salem at a man's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. He was one of the kind sports call a spider, All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work, Out of his hired help. I'm not denying He was hard on himself. I couldn't find That he kept any hours—-not for himself. Daylight and lantern-light were one to him: I've heard him pounding in the barn all night. But what he liked was someone to encourage. Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behind And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—- Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks (We call that bulling). I'd been watching him. So when he paired off with me in the hayfield To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble. I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders Combed it down with a rake and says, 'O. K.' Everything went well till we reached the barn With a big jag to empty in a bay. You understand that meant the easy job For the man up on top of throwing _down_ The hay and rolling it off wholesale, Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting. You wouldn't think a fellow'd need much urging Under those circumstances, would you now? But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come! Thinks I, D'ye mean it? 'What was that you said?' I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake, 'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.' He said it over, but he said it softer. Never you say a thing like that to a man, Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as soon Murdered him as left out his middle name. I'd built the load and knew right where to find it. Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for Like meditating, and then I just dug in And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots, I looked over the side once in the dust And caught sight of him treading-water-like, Keeping his head above. 'Damn ye,' I says, 'That gets ye!' He squeaked like a squeezed rat. That was the last I saw or heard of him. I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off. As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck, And sort of waiting to be asked about it, One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old man?' 'I left him in the barn under the hay. If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.' They realised from the way I swobbed my neck More than was needed something must be up. They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was. They told me afterward. First they forked hay, A lot of it, out into the barn floor. Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle. I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the temple Before I buried him, or I couldn't have managed. They excavated more. 'Go keep his wife Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a window, And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchen Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. He looked so clean disgusted from behind There was no one that dared to stir him up, Or let him know that he was being looked at. Apparently I hadn't buried him (I may have knocked him down); but my just trying To bury him had hurt his dignity. He had gone to the house so's not to meet me. He kept away from us all afternoon. We tended to his hay. We saw him out After a while picking peas in his garden: He couldn't keep away from doing something."

"Weren't you relieved to find he wasn't dead?"

"No! and yet I don't know—-it's hard to say. I went about to kill him fair enough."

"You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?" "Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right."

A HUNDRED COLLARS

Lancaster bore him—-such a little town, Such a great man. It doesn't see him often Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead And sends the children down there with their mother To run wild in the summer—-a little wild. Sometimes he joins them for a day or two And sees old friends he somehow can't get near. They meet him in the general store at night, Preoccupied with formidable mail, Rifling a printed letter as he talks. They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so: Though a great scholar, he's a democrat, If not at heart, at least on principle. Lately when coming up to Lancaster His train being late he missed another train And had four hours to wait at Woodsville Junction After eleven o'clock at night. Too tired To think of sitting such an ordeal out, He turned to the hotel to find a bed.

"No room," the night clerk said. "Unless----" Woodsville's a place of shrieks and wandering lamps And cars that shock and rattle—-and _one_ hotel.

"You say 'unless.'"

"Unless you wouldn't mind Sharing a room with someone else."

"Who is it?"

"A man.

"So I should hope. What kind of man?"

"I know him: he's all right. A man's a man. Separate beds of course you understand."

The night clerk blinked his eyes and dared him on. "Who's that man sleeping in the office chair? Has he had the refusal of my chance?"

"He was afraid of being robbed or murdered. What do you say?"

"I'll have to have a bed."

The night clerk led him up three flights of stairs And down a narrow passage full of doors, At the last one of which he knocked and entered, "Lafe, here's a fellow wants to share your room."

"Show him this way. I'm not afraid of him, I'm not so drunk I can't take care of myself." The night clerk clapped a bedstead on the foot. "This will be yours. Good-night," he said, and went.

"Lafe was the name, I think?"

"Yes, _Lay_fayette. You got it the first time. And yours?"

"Magoon.

Doctor Magoon."

"A Doctor?"

"Well, a teacher."

"Professor Square-the-circle-till-you're-tired? Hold on, there's something I don't think of now That I had on my mind to ask the first Man that knew anything I happened in with. I'll ask you later—-don't let me forget it." The Doctor looked at Lafe and looked away. A man? A brute. Naked above the waist, He sat there creased and shining in the light, Fumbling the buttons in a well-starched shirt. "I'm moving into a size-larger shirt. I've felt mean lately; mean's no name for it. I just found what the matter was to-night: I've been a-choking like a nursery tree When it outgrows the wide band of its name tag. I blamed it on the hot spell we've been having. 'Twas nothing but my foolish hanging back, Not liking to own up I'd grown a size. Number eighteen this is. What size do you wear?"

The Doctor caught his throat convulsively. "Oh—-ah—-fourteen—-fourteen."

"Fourteen! You say so! I can remember when I wore fourteen. And come to think I must have back at home More than a hundred collars, size fourteen. Too bad to waste them all. You ought to have them. They're yours and welcome; let me send them to you. What makes you stand there on one leg like that? You're not much furtherer than where Kike left you, You act as if you wished you hadn't come. Sit down or lie down friend; you make me nervous."

The Doctor made a subdued dash for it, And propped himself at bay against a pillow.