Robert Frost

I DWELL in a lonely house I know   
That vanished many a summer ago,   
  And left no trace but the cellar walls,   
  And a cellar in which the daylight falls,   
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.           
   
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield   
The woods come back to the mowing field;   
  The orchard tree has grown one copse   
  Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;   
The footpath down to the well is healed.    
   
I dwell with a strangely aching heart   
In that vanished abode there far apart   
  On that disused and forgotten road   
  That has no dust-bath now for the toad.   
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;    
   
The whippoorwill is coming to shout   
And hush and cluck and flutter about:   
  I hear him begin far enough away   
  Full many a time to say his say   
Before he arrives to say it out.    
   
It is under the small, dim, summer star.   
I know not who these mute folk are   
  Who share the unlit place with me—   
  Those stones out under the low-limbed tree   
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.    
   
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,   
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—   
  With none among them that ever sings,   
  And yet, in view of how many things,   
As sweet companions as might be had.    

 

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.