American Stories Four Poems by Robert Frost

01Few American poets are as well known as Robert Frost.

02Although he was born in San Francisco in 1874, Frost is forever linked with New England, where he lived and farmed.

03Many of his poems are stories containing New Englanders' ways of speaking and words.

04Frost won many honors, including four Pulitzer Prizes for his poems.

05In 1960, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

06Many Americans remember him for reciting from memory his poem, The Gift Outright, at the swearing-in of President John F.

07Kennedy in 1961.

08Here are four well-known poems by the New England poet as they were written without changes.

09Each contains a kind of story.

10We define only a few of the words, so try to discover words you do not know, and see how the words make sense in more than one way.

11First is a poem about harvesting fruit, called After Apple Picking.

12The next, my November guest, is about the weather right before New England's winter begins.

13Following that is The Road Not Taken, which is probably Frost's best-known poem.

14The final piece, The Mending Wall, is about fences and neighbors.

15Here is Mario Ritter, Jr.

16with four of Robert Frost's poems.

17After Apple Picking My long two-pointed ladders 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 am done with apple picking now.

18Essence of winter sleep is on the night.

19The scent of apples I am drowsing off.

20I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough, And held against the world of hoary grass.

21It melted, and I let it fall and break, But I was well upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell what form my dreaming was about to take.

22Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear.

23My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder round.

24I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend, And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound of load on load of apples coming in.

25For I have had too much of apple picking, I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired.

26There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

27For all that struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap, As of no worth.

28One can see what will trouble this sleep of mine, Whatever sleep it is.

29Were he not gone, the woodchuck Could say whether it's like his long sleep, As I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep.

30My November Guest My sorrow, when she's here with me, Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be.

31She loves the bare, the withered tree, She walks the sodden pasture lane.

32Her pleasure will not let me stay, She talks, and I am fain to list, She's glad the birds are gone away.

33She's glad her simple worsted gray Is silver now with clinging mist.

34The desolate, deserted trees, The faded earth, the heavy sky, The beauties she so truly sees, She thinks I have no eye for these, And vexes me for reason why.

35Not yesterday I learned to know The love of bare November days, Before the coming of the snow, But it were vain to tell her so, And they are better for her praise.

36The road not taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both, And be one traveller.

37Long I stood, And looked down one as far as I could, To where it bent in the undergrowth.

38Then took the other as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though, as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same.

39And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black.

40Oh, I kept the first for another day, Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

41I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence, Two roads diverged in a wood, And I, I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.

42Mending Wall 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.

43The work of hunters is another thing.

44I have come after them, And made repair, Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs.

45The gaps, I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending time, We find them there.

46I let my neighbor know beyond the hill, And on a day we meet to walk the line, And set the wall between us once again.

47We keep the wall between us as we go, To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

48And some are loaves, And some so nearly balls, We have to use a spell, To make them balance.

49Stay where you are until our backs are turned.

50We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

51Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side, It comes to little more.

52There, where it is, We do not need the wall.

53He is all pine, And I am apple orchard.

54My apple trees will never get across, And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

55He only says, Good fences make good neighbors.

56Spring is the mischief in me, And I wonder if I could put a notion in his head.

57Why do they make good neighbors?

58Isn't it where there are cows?

59But here there are no cows.

60Before I built a wall, I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense.

61Something there is That doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.

62I could say elves to him, But it's not elves exactly, And I'd rather he said it for himself.

63I see him there, Bringing a stone grasped firmly By the top in each hand, Like an old stone savage armed.

64He moves in darkness, As it seems to me, Not of woods only, And the shade of trees.

65He will not go behind, His father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well, He says again, Good fences make good neighbors.