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class="cg">With smell of burning on every plume,

Back past the sun to an earthly room.

 

His gains in heaven are what they are.

Yet some say Love by being thrall

And simply staying possesses all

In several beauty that Thought fares far

To find fused in another star.

29 BIRCHES

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 do that. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust––

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

(Now am I free to be poetical?)

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows––

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father’s trees

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By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

31 PEA BRUSH

I walked down alone Sunday after church

To the place where John has been cutting trees

To see for myself about the birch

He said I could have to bush my peas.

 

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap

Was hot enough for the first of May,

And stifling hot with the odor of sap

From stumps still bleeding their life away.

 

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill

Wherever the ground was low and wet,

The minute they heard my step went still

To watch me and see what I came to get.

 

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!––

All fresh and sound from the recent axe.

Time someone came with cart and pair

And got them off the wild flower’s backs.

 

They might be good for garden things

To curl a little finger round,

The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,

And lift themselves up off the ground.

 

Small good to anything growing wild,

They were crooking many a trillium

That had budded before the boughs were piled

And since it was coming up had to come.

32 PUTTING IN THE SEED

You come to fetch me from my work to-night

When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

 

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

33 A TIME TO TALK

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

34 THE COW IN APPLE TIME

Something inspires the only cow of late

To make no more of a wall than an open gate,

And think no more of wall-builders than fools.

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.

She bellows on a knoll against the sky.

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

35 AN ENCOUNTER

Once on the kind of day called “weather breeder,”

When the heat slowly hazes and the sun

By its own power seems to be undone,

I was half boring through, half climbing through

A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar

And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,

And sorry I ever left the road I knew,

I paused and rested on a sort of hook

That had me by the coat as good as seated,

And since there was no other way to look,

Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,

Stood over me a resurrected tree,

A tree that had been down and raised again––

A barkless spectre. He had halted too,

As if for fear of treading upon me.

I saw the strange position of his hands––

Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands

Of wire with something in it from men to men.

“You here?” I said. “Where aren’t you nowadays

And what’s the news you carry––if you know?

And tell me where you’re off for––Montreal?

Me? I’m not off for anywhere at all.

Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways

Half looking for the orchid Calypso.”

36 RANGE-FINDING

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung

And cut a flower beside a ground bird’s nest

Before it stained a single human breast.

The stricken flower bent double and so hung.

And still the bird revisited her young.

A butterfly its fall had dispossessed

A moment sought in air his flower of rest,

Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

 

On the bare upland pasture there had spread

O’ernight ’twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread

And straining cables wet with silver dew.

A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,

But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

37 THE HILL WIFE LONELINESS

(Her Word)

One ought not to have to care

So much as you and I

Care when the birds come round the house

To seem to say good-bye;

 

Or care so much when they come back

With whatever it is they sing;

The truth being we are as much

Too glad for the one thing

 

As we are too sad for the other here––

With birds that fill their breasts

But with each other and themselves

And their built or driven nests.

HOUSE FEAR

Always––I tell you this they learned––

Always at night when they returned

To the lonely house from far away

To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,

They learned to rattle the lock and key

To give whatever might chance to be

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Warning and time to be off in flight:

And preferring the out- to the in-door night,

They learned to leave the house-door wide

Until they had lit the lamp inside.

THE SMILE

(Her Word)

I didn’t like the way he went away.

That smile! It never came of being gay.

Still he smiled––did you see him?––I was sure!

Perhaps because we gave him only bread

And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.

Perhaps because he let us give instead

Of seizing from us as he might have seized.

Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,

Or being very young (and he was pleased

To have a vision of us old and dead).

I wonder how far down the road he’s got.

He’s watching from the woods as like as not.

THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough

For the dark pine that kept

Forever trying the window-latch

Of the room where they slept.

 

The tireless but ineffectual hands

That with every futile pass

Made the great tree seem as a little bird

Before the mystery of glass!

 

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It never had been inside the room,

And only one of the two

Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream

Of what the tree might do.

THE IMPULSE

It was too lonely for her there,

And too wild,

And since there were but two of them,

And no child,

 

And work was little in the house,

She was free,

And followed where he furrowed field,

Or felled tree.

 

She rested on a log and tossed

The fresh chips,

With a song only to herself

On her lips.

 

And once she went to break a bough

Of black alder.

She strayed so far she scarcely heard

When he called her––

 

And didn’t answer––didn’t speak––

Or return.

She stood, and then she ran and hid

In the fern.

 

He never found her, though he looked

Everywhere,

And he asked at her mother’s house

Was she there.

 

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Sudden and swift and light as that

The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities

Besides the grave.

41 THE BONFIRE

“Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,

As reckless as the best of them to-night,

By setting fire to all the brush we piled

With pitchy hands to wait for rain

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