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Robert Frost
This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn’t be idle to call
I’d summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.
Lichen, mistletoe, aloft
In the dying croft,
Leaf the winter trees.
One should not have an orchard and
Not care for it; so she tries,
Even lurches from the depths of a chair
She's found at some thrift, pre-softened; from
Her house, warm or cool as she might wish,
Out into too much sun or too much rain; from
Under the kind roof of a porch she'd built,
Leaving tool after tool there to gather
Dust and webs, marks of a new will to
Neglect. Beyond the weed-bent fence, an
Orchard of sorts awaits her care, each
Task having skipped two years at least.
Hands grasp lopper and saw. She visits
Apple, quince, pear, plum, cherry, clipping
Vines, tall weeds, watersprouts, suckers;
Even designates branches for her stove.
What to do about trees, for she had room:
Have an orchard. But isn't that thinking
About twenty years ahead? So she went
To the tool room for her spade in November;
Took that and four apple saplings down
Onto the flat by the road, and began. Years she
Did this, working up and around the rise
Of better ground. Pears, cherries, quince
Abounded, but the plums got blight, and had to
Be started over. She was too old to harvest
Or even get shade from nut trees, they're so slow;
Uncoupling crop from objective, she anyway set
Them out, along with the rest. Last, she
Thought of mulberries. The hens could have
Really used those. Oh, well. She ordered,
Even this late in life, and planted once more,
No firefly more forlorn, more gravely strays
Among the glories of the morning tree
Than I, who glide almost invisibly
Where apple boughs are white as brides' bouquets.
Beneath the arches of the orchard ways,
Only one tulip, that I start to see,
As though my own heart had dropped out of me,
Seems to have guessed that I, too, am ablaze.
My blood is full of gleamings like seafoam,
My body brims with something of the moon
And shakes, as if with wings that would unfold.
So, after dark, I bar the doors of home,
Lest those, who think that I am grey at noon,
Should stare at night to see that I am gold.
Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer--
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride; and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover--I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.
Moonlight bends over black silence,
Making it bloom to wild-flowers of sound
That only green things can hear.
A wind sprawls over an orchard,
Frightening its silent litany to sound.
A thread of star-light has fallen to this tree
And curls among its leaves, tangling them to silence....
Standing amidst these things, Beloved,
We feel the words our hearts cannot form.
An apple orchard smells like wine;
A succory flower is blue;
Until Grief touched these eyes of mine,
Such things I never knew.
And now indeed I know so plain
Why one would like to cry
When spouts are full of April rain —
Such lonely folk go by!
So wise — so wise — that my tears fall
Each breaking of the dawn;
That I would run to tell you all —
But you are dead and gone.
Now’s the time when children’s noses
All become as red as roses
And the colour of their faces
Makes me think of orchard places
Where the juicy apples grow
And tomatoes in a row.
And to-day the hardened sinner
Never could be late for dinner,
But will jump up to the table
Just as soon as he is able,
Ask for three times hot roast mutton--
Oh! the shocking little glutton.
Come then, find your ball and racket,
Pop into your winter jacket,
With the lovely bear-skin lining.
While the sun is brightly shining,
Cherry and pear are white,
Their snows lie sprinkled on the land like light
On darkness shed.
Far off and near
The orchards toss their crowns of delight,
And the sun casts down
Another shining crown.
The wind tears and throws down
Petal by petal the crown
Of cherry and pear till the earth is white,
And all the brightness is shed
In the orchards far off and near,
That tossed by the road and under the green hill;
And the wind is fled.
Far, far off the wind
Has shaken down
If I were on the High Road
That runs to Malvern Town,
I should not need to read, to smoke,
My fear of death to drown;
Watching the clouds, skies, shadows dappling
The sweet land up and down.
But here the shells rush over,
We lie in evil holes,
We burrow into darkness
Like rabbits or like moles,
Men that have breathed the Severn air,
Men that have eyes and souls.
To-day the grass runs over
With ripples like the sea,
And men stand up and drink air
Easy and sweet and free;
The door was gone, the jambs aslant, awry,
The roof grown over with the mosses slow,
The windows stared with blank and empty eye,
Half the panes gone. The flagstones grinned below
In gaping cracks. The foolish cattle came
About the orchard, where the unpruned trees
Held to the sky white boughs of trembling flame,
And long wild grasses brushed about our knees.
The dumb house called to us, the black, wide door
Stood open for us long and stood in vain :
Sighing we guessed those old walls held a store
Of rest for us when we should come again
Into the hollow, long and green and still —
Then turned away to cross the further hill.