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Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
It is harvest time in the teeming sea
And the surges labor tirelessly
Like toil bent reapers with sickles of foam
They garner the harvest and carry it home,
Till the beaches throb to the rhythmic beat
As they strew it in windrows at our feet.
Slender strands like a whip lash, tear
At the cowering sands - ’tis the Dead-Man’s Hair
And the rockweed bulges with bulbous lumps
All yellow and brown, with the jagged stumps
Of kelp stalks wrenched by the undertow
From sunken glens where the sea things grow.
Eel grass rolled by the waves at play
In fresh cut swaths like the new mown hay;
Lettuce that glints with a fragile sheen:
And Irish moss with its mottled green
These are the seeds of the future,
The weary, the wretched, the slain.
These are the ghosts we shall harvest
In wars that shall come again.
These are the fields we have furrowed,
The dreams that have fallen apart,
And this is the plow of our madness,
The fear that has entered the heart.
Oh, how shall we welcome the reaper
When autumn shall fill the air,
When all the hope of the springtime
Is cut with the edge of despair?
not much more
red and yellow tomatoes
behind a string fence
In a garden's grave, life remains: beets
Never pulled may be pulled now, to boil
And put back, for the flock to discover;
Greens have carried on and are taken
And dehydrated, or left for the goose to strip;
Red highlights show missed tomatoes;
Dense thickets of dead vines give beans.
Even the weeds, that had defeated her,
Now yield rich heads of seed for hens.
She walks about, coat-wrapped, scanning
Ground for spuds rolled out by hen feet.
Rarely, rewardingly, a ripe winter's squash
Awaits discovery. Gone to seed last year,
Viable chard and kale erupt now
Even as it were March, and are welcomed.
Little remains of her apple crop,
In August, but this year in July, Gravensteins:
golden fleshed, generous, kind to cook,
ciderer and ring-dryer. She tries everything,
but mostly butter: a large crockpotful
of peeled rings, quartered, lightly cloved,
cinnamoned and nutmegged will make
six pints and one short jelly jar. After
that, the old Egremont Russet, Cortland,
Honeycrisp and Jonagold come all together;
what can she do but slice them all in quarters,
toss them into her dedicated shredder,
pour pomace into a burlap bag
and hang that, with her father's pulley
and old hemp rope, to a maple branch?
Juice will run for hours, collecting
in a tub beneath; at evening she dips gold,
She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over
when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.
Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five-tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's
sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what
was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,
You promised War and Thunder and Romance.
You promised true, but we were very blind
And very young, and in our ignorance
We never called to mind
That truth is seldom kind.
You promised love, immortal as a star.
You promised true, yet how the truth can lie!
For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
And, deathless, still we cry,
Nor hope for a reply.
You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
Behold a reaper strode across the field,
And man of woman born
Was gathered in as corn.
You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
Sleep, O my little ones, sleep.
Safe till the daylight be breaking . . .
We have long vigils to keep,
Harvests to sow while you sleep.
Fair for the hour of your waking,
Ripe for your sickles to reap.
Sleep, O my little ones, sleep.
Yours is the golden To-morrow,
Yours are the hands that will reap
Dreams that we sow while you sleep.
Fed with our hope and our sorrow,
Rich with the tears that we weep.
Go, reaper,
Speed and reap,
Go take the harvest
Of the plough:
The wheat is standing
Broad and deep,
The barley glumes
Are golden now.
Labour is hard,
But it endures
Like love:
The land is yours:
Go reap the life
It gives you now,
O sunbrowned master
Of the plough!
A little hour of sunshine,
A little while of joy,
We winnow in our harvesting
From all the world's alloy.
None, none, are so benighted,
Who journey up life's hill.
But have some treasured memory,
Which lives all vibrant still.