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    Selected Poems
    Selected Poems
    Selected Poems
    Ebook140 pages1 hour

    Selected Poems

    By Robert Frost and Mint Editions

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    About this ebook

    Selected Poems (1923) is a collection of poems by American poet Robert Frost. Dedicated to Edward Thomas, a friend of Frost’s and an important English poet who died toward the end of the First World War, Selected Poems is a wonderful sampling of poems from Frost’s early collections, including A Boy’s Will and North of Boston. Known for his plainspoken language and dedication to the images and rhythms of rural New England, Robert Frost is one of America’s most iconic poets, a voice to whom generations of readers have turned in search of beauty, music, and life.

    “Mowing” envisions the poet’s work through the prism of rural labor. “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?” The speaker does not know, but continues his task, hypnotized by its rhythm and simple music. In “After Apple-Picking,” as fall gives over to winter, the poet remembers in dreams how the “Magnified apples appear and disappear, / Stem end and blossom end” as he climbs the ladder into the heart of the tree. Both a symbol for life and a metaphor for the poetic act, apple picking leaves the poet “overtired / Of the great harvest [he himself] desired”, awaiting sleep as he describes “its coming on,” wondering what, if anything, it will bring. “The Road Not Taken,” perhaps Frost’s most famous poem, is a meditation on fate and free will that follows a traveler in an autumn landscape, unsure of which path to take, but certain he cannot stand still.

    With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Robert Frost’s Selected Poems is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMint Editions
    Release dateFeb 1, 2021
    ISBN9781513275895
    Author

    Robert Frost

    Robert Frost (1874–1963) was a poet who was much admired for his depictions of rural life in New England, command of American colloquial speech, and realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

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      Book preview

      Selected Poems - Robert Frost

      I

      THE PASTURE

      I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;

      I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away

      (And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

      I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.

      I’m going out to fetch the little calf

      That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,

      It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

      I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.

      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.

      THE RUNAWAY

      Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,

      We stopped by a mountain pasture to say Whose colt?

      A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,

      The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head

      And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.

      We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,

      And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey,

      Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes.

      "I think the little fellow’s afraid of the snow.

      He isn’t winter-broken. It isn’t play

      With the little fellow at all. He’s running away.

      I doubt if even his mother could tell him, ‘Sakes,

      It’s only weather.’ He’d think she didn’t know!

      Where is his mother? He can’t be out alone."

      And now he comes again with a clatter of stone

      And mounts the wall again with whited eyes

      And all his tail that isn’t hair up straight.

      He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.

      "Whoever it is that leaves him out so late,

      When other creatures have gone to stall and bin,

      Ought to be told to come and take him in."

      II

      AN OLD MAN’S WINTER NIGHT

      All out of doors looked darkly in at him

      Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

      That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

      What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

      Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

      What kept him from remembering what it was

      That brought him to that creaking room was age.

      He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.

      And having scared the cellar under him

      In clomping there, he scared it once again

      In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,

      Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

      Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

      But nothing so like beating on a box.

      A light he was to no one but himself

      Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

      A quiet light, and then not even that.

      He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

      So late-arising, to the broken moon

      As better than the sun in any case

      For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

      His icicles along the wall to keep;

      And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

      Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

      And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

      One aged man—one man—can’t keep a house,

      A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

      It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

      HOME BURIAL

      He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

      Before she saw him. She was starting down,

      Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.

      She took a doubtful step and then undid it

      To raise herself and look again. He spoke

      Advancing toward her: "What is it you see

      From up there always—for I want to know."

      She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,

      And her face changed from terrified to dull.

      He said to gain time: What is it you see?

      Mounting until she cowered under him.

      I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.

      She, in her place, refused him any help

      With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.

      She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,

      Blind creature; and a while he didn’t see.

      But at last he murmured, Oh, and again, Oh.

      What is it—what? she said.

      Just that I see.

      You don’t, she challenged. Tell me what it is.

      "The wonder is I didn’t see at once.

      I never noticed it from here before.

      I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.

      The little graveyard where my people are!

      So small the window frames the whole of it.

      Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?

      There are three stones of slate and one of marble,

      Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight

      On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.

      But I understand: it is not the stones,

      But the child’s mound—"

      Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t," she cried.

      She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

      That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;

      And turned on him with such a daunting look,

      He said twice over before he knew himself:

      Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?

      "Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!

      I must get out of here. I must get air.

      I don’t know rightly whether any man can."

      "Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.

      Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs."

      He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.

      There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.

      You don’t know how to ask it.

      Help me, then.

      Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

      "My words are nearly always an offence.

      I don’t know how to speak of anything

      So as to please you. But I might be taught

      I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.

      A man must partly give up being a man

      With women-folk. We could have some arrangement

      By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

      Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

      Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.

      Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.

      But two that do can’t live together with them."

      She moved the latch a little. "Don’t—don’t go.

      Don’t carry it to someone else this time.

      Tell me about it if it’s something human.

      Let me into your grief. I’m not so much

      Unlike other folks as your standing there

      Apart

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