Photograph by Clara E. Sipprcll
COMPLETE POEMS
OF ROBERT FROST 1949
HENRY  HOLT  AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
A
BOY'S WILL
But he turned first, and led my eye to look At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
The mower in the dew had loved them thus, By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him, But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
The butterfly and I had lit upon, Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
That made me hear the wakening birds around, And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.
'Men work together/ I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart/
PAN WITH US
Pan came out of the woods one day,— His skin and his hair and his eyes were grav, The gray of the moss of walls were they,— And stood in the sun and looked his fill At wooded valley and wooded hill.
He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand, On a height of naked pasture land; In all the country he did command
He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
That was well! and he stamped a hoof.
His heart knew peace, for none came here To this lean feeding save once a year Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails Who see so little they tell no tales.
He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach A new-world song, far out of reach, For a sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech And the whimper of hawks beside the sun Were music enough for him, for one.
Times were changed from what they were: Such pipes kept less of power to stir The fruited bough of the juniper
And the fragile bluets clustered there Than the merest aimless breath of air.
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They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth And raveled a flower and looked away— Play? Play?-What should he play?
THE DEMIURGE'S LAUGH
It was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon s trail, Though I knew what I hunted was no true god,
It was just as the light was beginning to fail That I suddenly heard—all I needed to hear: It has lasted me many and many a year.
The sound was behind me instead of before, A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As of one who utterly couldn't care.
The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh.
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.
I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
I felt as a fool to have been so caught, And checked my steps to make pretense
It was something among the leaves I sought (Though doubtful whether he stayed to see). Thereafter I sat me against a tree.
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