Robert Frost

• 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.
  • Mending Wall (1915)

• Before 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 offence.
  Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
  That wants it down.
  • Mending Wall (1915)

• He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
  Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
  He will not go behind his father’s saying,
  And he likes having thought of it so well
  He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
  • Mending Wall (1915)

• 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.
  • Birches (1920)

• 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.
  • Birches (1920)

• SOME say the world will end in fire,
  Some say in ice.
  From what I’ve tasted of desire
  I hold with those who favor fire.
  But if it had to perish twice,
  I think I know enough of hate
  To know that for destruction ice
  Is also great
  And would suffice.
  • Fire and Ice (1920)

• Ah, when to the heart of man
  Was it ever less than a treason
  To go with the drift of things,
  To yield with a grace to reason,
  And bow and accept the end
  Of a love or a season?
  • Reluctance

The Road Not Taken (1916)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then 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,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I 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 traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

from DIRECTIVE

• Back out of all this now too much for us,
  Back in a time made simple by the loss
  Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
  Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
  There is a house that is no more a house
  Upon a farm that is no more a farm
  And in a town that is no more a town.
  
  The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
  Who only has at heart your getting lost,
  May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
  Great monolithic knees the former town
  Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
  And there's a story in a book about it…

• As for the woods' excitement over you
  That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
  Charge that to upstart inexperience.
  
  Where were they all not twenty years ago?
  They think too much of having shaded out
  A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.

• The height of the adventure is the height
  Of country where two village cultures faded
  Into each other. Both of them are lost.
  
  And if you're lost enough to find yourself
  By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
  And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.

• First there's the children's house of make-believe,
  Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
  The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
  
  Weep for what little things could make them glad.

• This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
  Your destination and your destiny's
  A brook that was the water of the house,
  Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
  Too lofty and original to rage.

• (We know the valley streams that when aroused
  Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)

• I have kept hidden in the instep arch
  Of an old cedar at the waterside
  A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
  Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
  So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
  
  (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
  Here are your waters and your watering place.
  Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Attributed

• In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life— It goes on.

• Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.