Brown’s Descent by Robert Frost

Brown lived at such a lofty farm That everyone for miles could see His lantern when he did his chores In winter after half-past three. And many must have seen him make His wild descent from there one night, ’Cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything, Describing rings of lantern light. Between the house and barn […]

Bond and Free by Robert Frost

Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about– Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Though has need of no such things, For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings. On snow and sand and turn, I see Where Love has left a printed trace With straining in the […]

Blue-Butterfly Day by Robert Frost

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry. But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in […]

Bereft by Robert Frost

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? Summer was past and day was past. Somber clouds in the west were massed. Out in the porch’s sagging floor, leaves […]

Atmosphere by Robert Frost

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 self-clear; Moisture and color and odor thicken here. The hours of daylight gather atmosphere. ————— The End And that’s the End […]

Asking For Roses by Robert Frost

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. I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary; ‘I wonder,’ I say, ‘who the owner of those is.’ ‘Oh, […]

An Old Man’s Winter Night by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to […]

An Encounter by Robert Frost

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 […]

An Empty Threat by Robert Frost

I stay; But it isn’t as if There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade. I can just see my tent pegged, And me on the floor, Cross-legged, And a trapper looking in at the door With furs to sell. His name’s Joe, Alias John, And between […]

After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost

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 am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I […]

Acquainted With the Night by Robert Frost

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 have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped […]

Acceptance by Robert Frost

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to […]

A Winter Eden by Robert Frost

A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be And not melt snow or start a dormant tree. It lifts existence on a plane of snow One level higher than the earth below, One level nearer heaven overhead, And last […]

A Time to Talk by Robert Frost

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 talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow […]

A Star in a Stoneboat by Robert Frost

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 one faded and stone-cold, And saving that its weight suggested gold And tugged it from his first too certain hold, He […]

A Soldier by Robert Frost

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 world, See nothing worthy to have been its mark, It is because like men we look too near, Forgetting that as […]

A Servant to Servants by Robert Frost

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 feed I guess you’d find…. It seems to me I can’t […]

A Question by Robert Frost

A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. […]

A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost

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 us pleasure in the orcahrd white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the […]

A Peck of Gold by Robert Frost

Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea-fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told Some of the blowing dust was gold. All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really […]

A Patch of Old Snow by Robert Frost

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten– If I ever read it. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]

A Passing Glimpse by Robert Frost

To Ridgely Torrence On Last Looking into His ‘Hesperides’ I often see flowers from a passing car That are gone before I can tell what they are. I want to get out of the train and go back To see what they were beside the track. I name all the flowers I am sure they […]

A Minor Bird by Robert Frost

I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day; Have clapped my hands at him from the door When it seemed as if I could bear no more. The fault must partly have been in me. The bird was not to blame for his key. And of course […]

A Late Walk by Robert Frost

When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words A tree beside the wall stands bare, […]

A Hundred Collars by Robert Frost

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 the summer–a little wild. Sometimes he joins them for a day or two And sees old friends he […]

A Hillside Thaw by Robert Frost

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 can’t pretend to tell the way it’s done. It looks as if some magic of the sun Lifted the rug that […]

A Girl’s Garden by Robert Frost

A NEIGHBOR of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, “Why not?” In casting about for a […]

A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears, and Some Books by Robert Frost

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 mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows. He’d like to take me there and show it to me. “I’ll tell you […]

A Dream Pang by Robert Frost

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, But did not enter, though the wish was strong: you shook your pensive head as who should say, ‘I dare not–to […]

A Cliff Dwelling by Robert Frost

There sandy seems the golden sky And golden seems the sandy plain. No habitation meets the eye Unless in the horizon rim, Some halfway up the limestone wall, That spot of black is not a stain Or shadow, but a cavern hole, Where someone used to climb and crawl To rest from his besetting fears. […]

A Brook in the City by Robert Frost

The firm house lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook? I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength And impulse, having dipped a finger length And made it leap my […]

A Boundless Moment by Robert Frost

He halted in the wind, and–what was that Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost? He stood there bringing March against his thought, And yet too ready to believe the most. ‘Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,’ I said; And truly it was fair enough for flowers had we but in us to assume in […]

Zero by Robert Creeley

Zero by Robert Creeley for Mark Peters Not just nothing, Not there’s no answer, Not it’s nowhere or Nothing to show for it – It’s like There’s no past like the present. It’s all over with us. There are no doors… Oh my god! Like I wish I had a dog. Oh my god! I […]

Water Music by Robert Creeley

Water Music by Robert Creeley The words are a beautiful music. The words bounce like in water. Water music, loud in the clearing off the boats, birds, leaves. They look for a place to sit and eat– no meaning, no point. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems […]

The Way by Robert Creeley

The Way by Robert Creeley My love’s manners in bed are not to be discussed by me, as mine by her I would not credit comment upon gracefully. Yet I ride by the margin of that lake in the wood, the castle, and the excitement of strongholds; and have a small boy’s notion of doing […]

The Warning by Robert Creeley

The Warning by Robert Creeley For love-I would split open your head and put a candle in behind the eyes. Love is dead in us if we forget the virtues of an amulet and quick surprise. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry […]

The Rain by Robert Creeley

The Rain by Robert Creeley All night the sound had come back again, and again falls this quite, persistent rain. What am I to myself that must be remembered, insisted upon so often? Is it that never the ease, even the hardness, of rain falling will have for me something other than this, something not […]

The Mirror by Robert Creeley

The Mirror by Robert Creeley Seeing is believing. Whatever was thought or said, these persistent, inexorable deaths make faith as such absent, our humanness a question, a disgust for what we are. Whatever the hope, here it is lost. Because we coveted our difference, here is the cost. ————— The End And that’s the End […]

The Innocence by Robert Creeley

The Innocence by Robert Creeley Looking to the sea, it is a line of unbroken mountains. It is the sky. It is the ground. There we live it, on it. It is a mist now tangent to another quiet. Here the leaves come, there is the rock in evidence or evidence. What I come to […]

The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley

The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley You send me your poems, I’ll send you mine. Things tend to awaken even through random communication Let us suddenly proclaim spring. And jeer at the others, all the others. I will send a picture too if you will send me one of you. ————— The End And that’s the […]