A Boy’s Will. Robert Frost

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      A Boy’s Will

      by Robert Frost

      ©2017 Wilder Publications

      Cover Image © Can Stock Photo / Gilmanshin

      All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

      ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-1941-9

PART I

      Into My Own

      One of my wishes is that those dark trees,

      So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,

      Were not, as ‘twere, the merest mask of gloom,

      But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

      I should not be withheld but that some day

      Into their vastness I should steal away,

      Fearless of ever finding open land,

      Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

      I do not see why I should e’er turn back,

      Or those should not set forth upon my track

      To overtake me, who should miss me here

      And long to know if still I held them dear.

      They would not find me changed from him they knew—

      Only more sure of all I thought was true.

      Ghost House

      I dwell in a lonely house I know

      That vanished many a summer ago,

      And left no trace but the cellar walls,

      And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

      And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

      O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

      The woods come back to the mowing field;

      The orchard tree has grown one copse

      Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

      The footpath down to the well is healed.

      I dwell with a strangely aching heart

      In that vanished abode there far apart

      On that disused and forgotten road

      That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

      Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

      The whippoorwill is coming to shout

      And hush and cluck and flutter about :

      I hear him begin far enough away

      Full many a time to say his say

      Before he arrives to say it out.

      It is under the small, dim, summer star,

      I know not who these mute folk are

      Who share the unlit place with me—

      Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

      Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

      They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

      Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—

      With none among them that ever sings,

      And yet, in view of how many things,

      As sweet companions as might be had.

      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.

      Love and a Question

      A stranger came to the door at eve,

      And he spoke the bridegroom fair.

      He bore a green-white stick in his hand,

      And, for all burden, care.

      He asked with the eyes more than the lips

      For a shelter for the night,

      And he turned and looked at the road afar

      Without a window light.

      The bridegroom came forth into the porch

      With ‘Let us look at the sky,

      And question what of the night to be,

      Stranger, you and I.’

      The woodbine leaves littered the yard,

      The woodbine berries were blue,

      Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;

      ‘Stranger, I wish I knew.’

      Within, the bride in the dusk alone

      Bent over the open fire,

      Her face rose-red with the glowing coal

      And the thought of the heart’s desire.

      The bridegroom looked at the weary road,

      Yet saw but her within,

      And wished her heart in a case of gold

      And pinned with a silver pin.

      The bridegroom thought it little to give

      A dole of bread, a purse,

      A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,

      Or for the rich a curse;

      But whether or not a man was asked

      To mar the love of two

      By harboring woe in the bridal house,

      The bridegroom wished he knew.

      A Late Walk

      When I go up through the mowing field,

      The headless aftermath,

      Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

      Half closes the garden path.

      And when I come to the garden ground,

      The