Miniver cursed the commonplace, And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; Miniver scorned the gold he sought, Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking. Edwin Arlington Robinson BIRCHES When I see birches bend to left and right I like to think some boy's been swinging them. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed You may see their trunks arching in the woods And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches; And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey, Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes. "I think the little fellow's afraid of the snow. He isn't winter broken. It isn't play With the little fellow at all. He's running away. Where is his mother? He'd think she didn't know! He can't be out alone." And now he comes again with clatter of stone, MENDING WALL - Robert Frost Something there is that doesn't love a wall, One on a side. It comes to little more: And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. If I could put a notion in his head: 66 Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track! |