To E. M. F. This book of people...

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long.⁠—You come too. I’m going out to fetch the little c...

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is ano...

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step, She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage To meet him in the doorway with the news And put him on his gua...

The 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...

Lancaster bore him⁠—such a little town, Such a great man. It doesn’t see him often Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead And sends the children down there with their mother To run wild in t...

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 ag...

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 we were spe...

“You ought to have seen what I saw on my way To the village, through Mortenson’s pasture today: Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum In the cavernou...

I didn’t make you know how glad I was To have you come and camp here on our land. I promised myself to get down some day And see the way you lived, but I don’t know! With a houseful of hungry men to f...

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I a...

There were three in the meadow by the brook Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, With an eye always lifted toward the west Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud Darkly advanced with a perpetual...

A governor it was proclaimed this time, When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire Ancestral memories might come together. And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow, A rock-strewn town where f...

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 out. I’m getting too old for my size, ...

A lantern light from deeper in the barn Shone on a man and woman in the door And threw their lurching shadows on a house Near by, all dark in every glossy window. A horse’s hoof pawed once the hollow ...

“Willis, I didn’t want you here today: The lawyer’s coming for the company. I’m going to sell my soul, or, rather, feet. Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know.” “With you the feet have nearly be...

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day I paused and said, “I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther⁠—and we shall see.” The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went d...

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; ...