Paul’s Wife by Robert Frost

To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, “How is the wife, Paul?”–and he’d disappear. Some said it was because be bad no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject; Others because he’d come within a day Or so of having one, and then […]

Pan with Us by Robert Frost

Pan came out of the woods one day,– His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray, The gray of the moss of walls were they,– And stood in the sun and looked his fill At wooded valley and wooded hill. He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand, On a height of naked […]

‘Out, Out–‘ by Robert Frost

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and […]

Our Singing Strength by Robert Frost

It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm The flakes could find no landing place to form. Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold, And still they failed of any lasting hold. They made no white impression on the black. They disappeared as if earth sent them back. Not till from […]

One Step Backward Taken by Robert Frost

Not only sands and gravels Were once more on their travels, But gulping muddy gallons Great boulders off their balance Bumped heads together dully And started down the gully. Whole capes caked off in slices. I felt my standpoint shaken In the universal crisis. But with one step backward taken I saved myself from going. […]

Once By The Pacific by Robert Frost

The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore That water never did to land before. The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. You could not tell, and yet it looked […]

On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations by Robert Frost

You’ll wait a long, long time for anything much To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves. The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch, Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud. The planets seem to interfere in their […]

On Going Unnoticed by Robert Frost

As vain to raise a voice as a sigh In the tumult of free leaves on high. What are you in the shadow of trees Engaged up there with the light and breeze? Less than the coral-root you know That is content with the daylight low, And has no leaves at all of its own; […]

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road by Robert Frost

(To hear us talk) The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not bar Our passage to our journey’s end for good, But just to ask us who we think we are Insisting always on our own way so. She likes to halt us in our runner […]

October by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts […]

Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost

Now close the windows and hush all the fields: If the trees must, let them silently toss; No bird is singing now, and if there is, Be it my loss. It will be long ere the marshes resume, I will be long ere the earliest bird: So close the windows and not hear the wind, […]

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by […]

Not To Keep by Robert Frost

They sent him back to her. The letter came Saying… And she could have him. And before She could be sure there was no hidden ill Under the formal writing, he was in her sight, Living. They gave him back to her alive How else? They are not known to send the dead And not […]

New Hampshire by Robert Frost

I met a lady from the South who said (You won’t believe she said it, but she said it): “None of my family ever worked, or had A thing to sell.” I don’t suppose the work Much matters. You may work for all of me. I’ve seen the time I’ve had to work myself. The […]

Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be The Same by Robert Frost

He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words. Admittedly an eloquence so soft Could only have had an influence on birds When call or […]

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep by Robert Frost

The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day. As long as it takes to pass A ship keeps raising its hull; The wetter ground like glass Reflects a standing gull The land may vary more; But wherever the […]

My November Guest by Robert Frost

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, […]

My Butterfly by Robert Frost

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too, And the daft sun-assaulter, he That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead: Saave only me (Nor is it sad to thee!) Save only me There is none left to mourn thee in the fields. The gray grass is scarce dappled with the snow; Its two banks […]

Mowing by Robert Frost

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? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound– And that was why it whispered and did […]

Misgiving by Robert Frost

All crying, ‘We will go with you, O Wind!’ The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go, And they end by bidding them as they go, And they end by bidding him stay with them. Since ever they flung abroad in spring The leaves had promised themselves this […]

Meeting and Passing by Robert Frost

As I went down the hill along the wall There was a gate I had leaned at for the view And had just turned from when I first saw you As you came up the hill. We met. But all We did that day was mingle great and small Footprints in summer dust as if […]

Maple by Robert Frost

Her teacher’s certainty it must be Mabel Made Maple first take notice of her name. She asked her father and he told her, “Maple— Maple is right.” “But teacher told the school There’s no such name.” “Teachers don’t know as much As fathers about children, you tell teacher. You tell her that it’s M-A-P-L-E. You […]

Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter by Robert Frost

The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; A bird with an angelic gift Was singing in it sweet and […]

Lodged by Robert Frost

The rain to the wind said, ‘You push and I’ll pelt.’ They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged–though not dead. I know how the flowers felt. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the […]

Locked Out by Robert Frost

As told to a child When we locked up the house at night, We always locked the flowers outside And cut them off from window light. The time I dreamed the door was tried And brushed with buttons upon sleeves, The flowers were out there with the thieves. Yet nobody molested them! We did find […]

Leaves Compared With Flowers by Robert Frost

A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit. But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark […]

Into My Own by Robert Frost

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 th eedge of doom. I should not be withheld but that some day into their vastness I should steal away, Fearless of ever finding […]

In the Home Stretch by Robert Frost

SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked Over the sink out through a dusty window At weeds the water from the sink made tall. She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand. Behind her was confusion in the room, Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people In other chairs, and […]

In Neglect by Robert Frost

They leave us so to the way we took, As two in whom them were proved mistaken, That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook, With michievous, vagrant, seraphic look, And try if we cannot feel forsaken. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. […]

In Hardwood Groves by Robert Frost

The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove. Before the leaves can mount again To fill the trees with another shade, They must go down past things coming up. They must go down into the […]

In a Vale by Robert Frost

WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale By a misty fen that rang all night, And thus it was the maidens pale I knew so well, whose garments trail Across the reeds to a window light. The fen had every kind of bloom, And for every kind there was a face, And a […]

In a Disused Graveyard by Robert Frost

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: “The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay.” So sure of death the […]

Immigrants by Robert Frost

No ship of all that under sail or steam Have gathered people to us more and more But Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dream Has been her anxious convoy in to shore. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate […]

II. The Pauper Witch of Grafton by Robert Frost

Now that they’ve got it settled whose I be, I’m going to tell them something they won’t like: They’ve got it settled wrong, and I can prove it. Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting To make a present of me to each other. They don’t dispose me, either one of them, To […]

I Will Sing You One-O by Robert Frost

It was long I lay Awake that night Wishing that night Would name the hour And tell me whether To call it day (Though not yet light) And give up sleep. The snow fell deep With the hiss of spray; Two winds would meet, One down one street, One down another, And fight in a […]

I. The Witch of Coös by Robert Frost

I stayed the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountains, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking. MOTHER: Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She could call up to pass a winter evening, But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn’t […]

Hyla Brook by Robert Frost

By June our brook’s run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground (And taken with it all the Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)– Or flourished and come up […]

Home Burial by Robert Frost

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 — […]

Hannibal by Robert Frost

Was there even a cause too lost, Ever a cause that was lost too long, Or that showed with the lapse of time to vain For the generous tears of youth and song? ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the […]

Good Hours by Robert Frost

I had for my winter evening walk– No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms […]