A Boy's Will and North of Boston
By Robert Frost
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About this ebook
Robert Frost
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet. Born in San Francisco, Frost moved with his family to Lawrence, Massachusetts following the death of his father, a teacher and editor. There, he attended Lawrence High School and went on to study for a brief time at Dartmouth College before returning home to work as a teacher, factory worker, and newspaper delivery person. Certain of his calling as a poet, Frost sold his first poem in 1894, embarking on a career that would earn him acclaim and honor unlike any American poet before or since. Before his paternal grandfather’s death, he purchased a farm in Derry, New Hampshire for Robert and his wife Elinor. For the next decade, Frost worked on the farm while writing poetry in the mornings before returning to teaching once more. In 1912, having moved to England, Frost published A Boy’s Will, his first book of poems. Through the next several years, he wrote and published poetry while befriending such writers as Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound. In 1915, after publishing North of Boston (1914) in London, Frost returned to the United States to settle on another farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he continued writing and teaching and began lecturing. Over the next several decades, Frost published numerous collections of poems, including New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (1924) and Collected Poems (1931), winning a total of four Pulitzer Prizes and establishing his reputation as the foremost American poet of his generation.
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A Boy's Will and North of Boston - Robert Frost
A BOY'S WILL
AND
NORTH OF BOSTON
BY ROBERT FROST
A Digireads.com Book
Digireads.com Publishing
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2730-6
Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-985-6
This edition copyright © 2012
Please visit www.digireads.com
CONTENTS
A BOY'S WILL
PART I
Into My Own. The youth is persuaded that he will be rather more than less himself for having forsworn the world.
Ghost House. He is happy in society of his choosing.
My November Guest. He is in love with being misunderstood.
Love and a Question. He is in doubt whether to admit real trouble to a place beside the hearth with love.
A Late Walk. He courts the autumnal mood.
Stars. There is no oversight of human affairs.
Storm Fear. He is afraid of his own isolation.
Wind and Window Flower. Out of the winter things he fashions a story of modern love.
To the Thawing Wind. He calls on change through the violence of the elements.
A Prayer in Spring. He discovers that the greatness of love lies not in forward-looking thoughts;
Flower-gathering. nor yet in any spur it may be to ambition.
Rose Pogonias. He is no dissenter from the ritualism of nature;
Asking for Roses. nor from the ritualism of youth which is make-believe.
Waiting—A field at Dusk. He arrives at the turn of the year.
In a Vale. Out of old longings he fashions a story.
A Dream Pang. He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him.
In Neglect. He is scornful of folk his scorn cannot reach.
The Vantage Point. And again scornful, but there is no one hurt
Mowing. He takes up life simply with the small tasks.
Going for Water
PART II
Revelation. He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since there is no help else;
The Trial by Existence. and to know definitely what he thinks about the soul;
In Equal Sacrifice. about love;
The Tuft of Flowers. about fellowship;
Spoils of the Dead. about death;
Pan with Us. about art (his own);
The Demiurge's Laugh. about science.
PART III
Now Close the Windows. It is time to make an end of speaking.
A Line-Storm Song. It is the autumnal mood with a difference.
October. He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were.
My Butterfly. There are things that can never be the same.
Reluctance
NORTH OF BOSTON
Mending Wall
The Death of the Hired Man
The Mountain
A Hundred Collars
Home Burial
The Black Cottage
Blueberries
A Servant to Servants
After Apple-picking
The Code
The Generations of Men
The Housekeeper
The Fear
The Self-seeker
The Wood-pile
Good Hours
A BOY'S WILL
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 gray
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