Inscription for a Garden Wall Winds blow the open grassy places bleak; But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek, They eddy over it too toppling weak To blow the earth or anything

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift. The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend

I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a dream they brought of

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods

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

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. If we who sight along it round the

We chanced in passing by that afternoon To catch it in a sort of special picture Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, The little cottage

I’ve known ere now an interfering branch Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me. But that was in the woods, to hold my hand From striking at another alder’s roots, And that was,

This saying good-by 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

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

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

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master, With doors that none but the wind ever closes, Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster; It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast. I went to school to age to learn

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

A dented spider like a snow drop white On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth – Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? –

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

Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for, Holding open a restive door, Looking down hill to a frothy shore?

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I

The three stood listening to a fresh access Of wind that caught against the house a moment, Gulped snow, and then blew free again-the Coles Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep, Meserve

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me. Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground, And thing

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain In Dalton that would someday make his fortune. There’d been some Boston people out to see it: And experts said that deep down in the mountain The

OH, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give

Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught. Man came to tell it what was

He is said to have been the last Red man In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed If you like to call such a sound a laugh. But he gave no

Here further up the mountain slope Than there was every any hope, My father built, enclosed a spring, Strung chains of wall round everything, Subdued the growth of earth to grass, And brought our

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

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

To think to know the country and now know The hillside on the day the sun lets go Ten million silver lizards out of snow! As often as I’ve seen it done before I

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway; And to the forest edge you came one day (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,

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

A SATURATED meadow, Sun-shaped and jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider Than the trees around were tall; Where winds were quite excluded, And the air was stifling sweet With the breath of many flowers, A

I let myself in at the kitchen door. “It’s you,” she said. “I can’t get up. Forgive me Not answering your knock. I can no more Let people in than I can keep them

When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay. Ice-storms

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at

Out alone in the winter rain, Intent on giving and taking pain. But never was I far out of sight Of a certain upper-window light. The light was what it was all about: I

From where I lingered in a lull in march Outside the sugar-house one night for choice, I called the fireman with a careful voice And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:

For Lincoln MacVeagh Never tell me that not one star of all That slip from heaven at night and softly fall Has been picked up with stones to build a wall. Some laborer found