North of Boston Robert Frost (desktop ebook reader TXT) đ
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- Author: Robert Frost
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âOf course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldnât grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three timesâ âhe made me feel so queerâ â
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilsonâ âyou rememberâ â
The boy you had in haying four years since.
Heâs finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares youâll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On educationâ âyou know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.â
âYes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.â
âWell, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldnât think they would. How some things linger!
Haroldâs young college boyâs assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Haroldâs associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Haroldâs saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked itâ âthat an argument!
He said he couldnât make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prongâ â
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hayâ ââ
âI know, thatâs Silasâ one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birdsâ nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
Heâs trying to lift, straining to lift himself.â
âHe thinks if he could teach him that, heâd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.â
Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
âWarren,â she said, âhe has come home to die:
You neednât be afraid heâll leave you this time.â
âHome,â he mocked gently.
âYes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course heâs nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.â
âHome is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.â
âI should have called it
Something you somehow havenât to deserve.â
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
âSilas has better claim on us you think
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt today.
Why didnât he go there? His brotherâs rich,
A somebodyâ âdirector in the bank.â
âHe never told us that.â
âWe know it though.â
âI think his brother ought to help, of course.
Iâll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing toâ â
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If heâd had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
Heâd keep so still about him all this time?â
âI wonder whatâs between them.â
âI can tell you.
Silas is what he isâ âwe wouldnât mind himâ â
But just the kind that kinsfolk canât abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He donât know why he isnât quite as good
As anyone. He wonât be made ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he is.â
âI canât think Si ever hurt anyone.â
âNo, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.
He wouldnât let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
Youâll be surprised at himâ âhow much heâs broken.
His working days are done; Iâm sure of it.â
âIâd not be in a hurry to say that.â
âI havenât been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
Heâs come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustnât laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
Iâll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.â
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returnedâ âtoo soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
âWarren,â she questioned.
âDead,â was all he answered.
The MountainThe mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its black body cut into the sky.
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
And yet between the town and it I found,
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,
Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
The river at the time was fallen away,
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;
But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass
Ridges of sand, and driftwood
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