Part 2

When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm (Now am I free to be poetical?) I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk _Toward_ heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

PEA BRUSH

I walked down alone Sunday after church To the place where John has been cutting trees To see for myself about the birch He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap Was hot enough for the first of May, And stifling hot with the odor of sap From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill Wherever the ground was low and wet, The minute they heard my step went still To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!-- All fresh and sound from the recent axe. Time someone came with cart and pair And got them off the wild flower's backs.

They might be good for garden things To curl a little finger round, The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings, And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild, They were crooking many a trillium That had budded before the boughs were piled And since it was coming up had to come.

PUTTING IN THE SEED

You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree. (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you ere you lose sight Of what you came for and become like me, Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

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 COW IN APPLE TIME

Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. She bellows on a knoll against the sky. Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

AN ENCOUNTER

Once on the kind of day called "weather breeder," When the heat slowly hazes and the sun By its own power seems to be undone, I was half boring through, half climbing through A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated, And sorry I ever left the road I knew, I paused and rested on a sort of hook That had me by the coat as good as seated, And since there was no other way to look, Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue, Stood over me a resurrected tree, A tree that had been down and raised again-- A barkless spectre. He had halted too, As if for fear of treading upon me. I saw the strange position of his hands-- Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands Of wire with something in it from men to men. "You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays And what's the news you carry--if you know? And tell me where you're off for--Montreal? Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all. Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways Half looking for the orchid Calypso."

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.

THE HILL WIFE

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.

THE BONFIRE

"Oh, let's go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let's not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile The way we piled it. And let's be the talk Of people brought to windows by a light Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper. Rouse them all, both the free and not so free With saying what they'd like to do to us For what they'd better wait till we have done. Let's all but bring to life this old volcano, If that is what the mountain ever was-- And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will...."

"And scare you too?" the children said together.

"Why wouldn't it scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out, and before it burns out It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars, And sweeping round it with a flaming sword, Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle-- Done so much and I know not how much more I mean it shall not do if I can bind it. Well if it doesn't with its draft bring on A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter, As once it did with me upon an April. The breezes were so spent with winter blowing They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them Short of the perch their languid flight was toward; And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven As I walked once round it in possession. But the wind out of doors--you know the saying. There came a gust. You used to think the trees Made wind by fanning since you never knew It blow but that you saw the trees in motion. Something or someone watching made that gust. It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass Of over-winter with the least tip-touch Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand. The place it reached to blackened instantly. The black was all there was by day-light, That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke-- And a flame slender as the hepaticas, Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now. But the black spread like black death on the ground, And I think the sky darkened with a cloud Like winter and evening coming on together. There were enough things to be thought of then. Where the field stretches toward the north And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it To flames without twice thinking, where it verges Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear They might find fuel there, in withered brake, Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod, And alder and grape vine entanglement, To leap the dusty deadline. For my own I took what front there was beside. I knelt And thrust hands in and held my face away. Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating. A board is the best weapon if you have it. I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew, And said out loud, I couldn't bide the smother And heat so close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me--that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; and on that side the fire Died not without a noise of crackling wood-- Of something more than tinder-grass and weed-- That brought me to my feet to hold it back By leaning back myself, as if the reins Were round my neck and I was at the plough. I won! But I'm sure no one ever spread Another color over a tenth the space That I spread coal-black over in the time It took me. Neighbors coming home from town Couldn't believe that so much black had come there While they had backs turned, that it hadn't been there When they had passed an hour or so before Going the other way and they not seen it. They looked about for someone to have done it. But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering Where all my weariness had gone and why I walked so light on air in heavy shoes In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling. Why wouldn't I be scared remembering that?"

"If it scares you, what will it do to us?"

"Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared, What would you say to war if it should come? That's what for reasons I should like to know-- If you can comfort me by any answer."

"Oh, but war's not for children--it's for men."

"Now we are digging almost down to China. My dears, my dears, you thought that--we all thought it. So your mistake was ours. Haven't you heard, though, About the ships where war has found them out At sea, about the towns where war has come Through opening clouds at night with droning speed Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels,-- And children in the ships and in the towns? Haven't you heard what we have lived to learn? Nothing so new--something we had forgotten: _War is for everyone, for children too_. I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't. The best way is to come up hill with me And have our fire and laugh and be afraid."

A GIRL'S GARDEN

A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner He thought of an idle bit Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood, And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you An ideal one-girl farm, And give you a chance to put some strength On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden, Her father said, to plough; So she had to work it all by hand, But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing. And then she begged the seed. She says she thinks she planted one Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes, Radishes, lettuce, peas, Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted That a cider apple tree In bearing there to-day is hers, Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none.

_Now_ when she sees in the village How village things go, Just when it seems to come in right, She says, "_I_ know!

It's as when I was a farmer----" Oh, never by way of advice! And she never sins by telling the tale To the same person twice.

THE EXPOSED NEST

You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, I went to show you how to make it stay, If that was your idea, against the breeze, And, if you asked me, even help pretend To make it root again and grow afresh. But 'twas no make-believe with you to-day, Nor was the grass itself your real concern, Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover. 'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground The cutter-bar had just gone champing over (Miraculously without tasting flesh) And left defenseless to the heat and light. You wanted to restore them to their right Of something interposed between their sight And too much world at once--could means be found. The way the nest-full every time we stirred Stood up to us as to a mother-bird Whose coming home has been too long deferred, Made me ask would the mother-bird return And care for them in such a change of scene And might our meddling make her more afraid. That was a thing we could not wait to learn. We saw the risk we took in doing good, But dared not spare to do the best we could Though harm should come of it; so built the screen You had begun, and gave them back their shade. All this to prove we cared. Why is there then No more to tell? We turned to other things. I haven't any memory--have you?-- Of ever coming to the place again To see if the birds lived the first night through, And so at last to learn to use their wings.

"OUT, OUT--"

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap-- He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-- Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart-- He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off-- The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

BROWN'S DESCENT

OR

THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE

Brown lived at such a lofty farm That everyone for miles could see His lantern when he did his chores In winter after half-past three.

And many must have seen him make His wild descent from there one night, 'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything, Describing rings of lantern light.

Between the house and barn the gale Got him by something he had on And blew him out on the icy crust That cased the world, and he was gone!

Walls were all buried, trees were few: He saw no stay unless he stove A hole in somewhere with his heel. But though repeatedly he strove

And stamped and said things to himself, And sometimes something seemed to yield, He gained no foothold, but pursued His journey down from field to field.

Sometimes he came with arms outspread Like wings, revolving in the scene Upon his longer axis, and With no small dignity of mien.

Faster or slower as he chanced, Sitting or standing as he chose, According as he feared to risk His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,

He never let the lantern drop. And some exclaimed who saw afar The figures he described with it, "I wonder what those signals are

Brown makes at such an hour of night! He's celebrating something strange. I wonder if he's sold his farm, Or been made Master of the Grange."

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked; He fell and made the lantern rattle (But saved the light from going out.) So half-way down he fought the battle

Incredulous of his own bad luck. And then becoming reconciled To everything, he gave it up And came down like a coasting child.

"Well--I--be--" that was all he said, As standing in the river road, He looked back up the slippery slope (Two miles it was) to his abode.

Sometimes as an authority On motor-cars, I'm asked if I Should say our stock was petered out, And this is my sincere reply:

Yankees are what they always were. Don't think Brown ever gave up hope Of getting home again because He couldn't climb that slippery slope;